[mythtv-users] Power to the Masses (CPU Power that is) - LONG!!

[Richard J. Sears]

Hey Everyone - 

I need a little help to steer clear of any landmines out there. I have
read a lot of different stuff on hardware and software, drivers, video
cards etc, and I have come up with a list of what I THINK will work, but
was hoping someone could eye it over for any flaws before my building
process starts.


What I want to do is have a dedicated backend system for grabbing all of
my video stuff which will reside in my office and several "frontend"
systems in the house for just watching the stuff off the backend. 

I have a cable tv connection, an external HD antenna, and around 250
DVDs I want to put on the system for playing without having to load the
dvds. I also have around 10,000 MP3s from my cd collections I want to
load on the system.

Here is the plan for the backend:

HD-3000 HDTV PCI Card

Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 (someone said you cannot watch DVD's with this
card, has that been corrected, or should I stick with the 250..?)

LSI Login MegaRAID SATA Controller

4 x Maxtor 300GB Hard Drives (RAID 5)


Questions for the backend system:

Do I need a real good video card for this system since it will not be
hooked to a TV at all...?

Do I need a decent sound card to capture the sound, or will the ivtv
driver work for both the 250/350 and the HD-3000

How powerful of a CPU do I need to handle the HDTV stuff. I realize that
the 350 has a builtin hardware mpeg encoder/decoder, but I am not sure
about the HDTV side of the house. 

Do I need a separate tuner card in the backend system for each frontend
system in order for them to watch separate 'live' channels..? SO if I
had 3 frontend systems that wanted to watch different 'live' channels, I
would need 3 x PVR-350's..?



On the frontend, I assume that I need

1) Hard Drive
2) Good Video Card
3) Good Sound Card

The hard drive does not have to be that big because its only going to
run the front end application correct..? No need for mysql, and all the
extra stuff that had to been installed in the backend, or am I incorrect
here..?

On the video card, I was told to use a card that supported XV. I was
hoping to use a nice ATI or NVidia that would support component out as
opposed to composite or S-Video. But how powerful of a card do I need

Also, how powerful a machine and video card do I need on the front end
to watch the HDTV stuff, or is all of that processing done on the
backend system and just streamed to the frontend..? I was thinking of
running the ASUS Pundit as my front end systems (with a different video
card (if necessary)).


Thanks for any input anyone may have !!!




******************************************
Richard J. Sears
Vice President         
American Internet Services                          
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rsears at adnc.com
http://www.adnc.com
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858.576.4272 - Phone
858.427.2401 - Fax
INOC-DBA - 6130
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