[mythtv-users] Couple more questions before I buy parts

[Kevin D. Snodgrass]

I spent most of the weekend reading (and reading), the XBox 
frontend looks like the best option for me, *IF* the output 
is as good as that from an NVidia GF4MX or similar.  Yes/no?

Putting the mythtv backend in a different room (and moving 
the other computers, except this laptop, there also) would 
make my living room much quiter. :-)

Two additional questions on the XBox-as-mythtv frontend. 
I'm not a game player, so I will never need the XBox to be 
an XBox, just a cheap PC to play my recorded video.

Can it handle playback the mpeg2 captures from a PVR-250 
straight away, or do they need to be transcoded?  I assume 
this is the case, since the XBox comes with a DVD drive and 
mpeg2 is the DVD standard.

The XBox comes with 64MB RAM, which I think I read somewhere 
is shared with the video.  Is this really enough?  I've got 
512MB in this laptop and I'm always swapping to disk.  Maybe 
the MythTV-XBox setup has a very small footprint.  Can I add 
more memory?  Would it matter?


Many thanks to Jarod Wilson, Dennis Carter (for MythTV-Xbox 
support forums), and Daniel Walton and Robert Kulagowski for 
pointing out the XBox-linux websites.


Oh, one more question, if I go with the XBox frontend the 
MythTV backend will not need to be near as powerful.  I've 
got an old Intel PII-300 dualy that is currently no being 
used for anything.  Is MythTV SMP friendly?  Would a dual 
PII-300 with 512MB handle 3/4 PVR cards?