[mythtv-users] please sanity check my new hardware
Steven Adeff
adeffs.mythtv at gmail.com
Thu Apr 6 15:29:57 UTC 2006
On 4/6/06, Jo Shields <directhex at apebox.org> wrote:
> Wise man say "don't buy a sodding radeon express board, they're
> fundementally broken under Linux". Or windows either, if one believes
> http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzgx
I completely agree on this, I've got an ATI in my laptop (X200 Mobile)
that I'm just happy
A) doesn't crash like my friends ATI equiped laptop does in windows. constantly.
B) works in 2D, I gave up on 3d.
I also found that the X200 has the "pink bar" issue with Xv, which
makes me think it won't work on the motherboard you found for properly
displaying 720p or greater content.
On 4/6/06, Disconnect <mythtv at gotontheinter.net> wrote:
> So my old hardware (which is really over capacity as it is) can't record or
> play back hidef. Which means its time for new hardware, yay!
Are you sure? HD recording doesn't take a whole lot. Why don't you
post what your current system is so we can better determine this.
> I'm looking at a combined fe/be on dedicated hardware, aimed at OTA hidef,
> deinterlacing of svideo (eg tvtime, for watching from the directivo) and
> general HTPC tasks (weather, videos, music, photos..). Can someone give a
> quick glance at this and let me know what they think? (Its somewhat
> overkill, but I'm not sure where - or if - it makes sense to cut back the
> most.)
I'll go ahead and comment, though I still think going with a dedicated
backend and building a seperate frontend capable of HD playback will
be the way for you to go....
> - Shuttle ST20G5
> (http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/ST20G5.asp)
> I was originally looking at some of their newer boxes, but they either had
> no pci slot (for the capture card), no ghz ht bus, or some other serious
> issue. The main concern I have with this one is the lack of gig-e, which may
> become an issue down the road when I move the backend (or at least the
> datastore) elsewhere.
> If the 800mhz HT bus and agp 8x is sufficient, the SN95G5 looks like the
> better option. So feedback here would be appreciated. (It does look like
> nvidia is the way to go for myth these days, and the ST20G5 is all ATI.)
> And the SN95G5 has no built-in video, so suggestions on a passable AGP card
> to stuff in it would also be welcome.
If you must, go with the SN95G. I'll say though, Silverstone makes
some darn nice small form factor HTPC cases... Then get a fanless
FX5200 with DVI output.
> - 2 WD4000YR 400g 7200rpm sata-150 drives. (Both boxes have SATA-150, so no
> need for anything faster.) Going to use either onboard raid-0 or LVM,
> haven't decided. (Price difference for the 'standard' non-raid-funkified
> drives was something like $3, so I went with the funkified version.)
looks good, I've got a few WD drives (7) and have had not had any
issues with them.
> - 1G (2x512) DDR-400 Corsair (already on order since there is a mail-in that
> expires today) People expressed satisfaction with a gig, and it seems to be
> working on the existing box, so..
my HD capable, 5 tuner fe/be runs on 512MB w/ no issues, 1GB will be
more than enough.
> - Athlon64 3700+ San Diego (2.2G, 1ghz ht bus, 1M l2 cache). I figure this
> box might as well be over-powered, since I'm unlikely to do much in the way
> of upgrades to it before EOL. (Ram and storage is all I ever seem to touch
> after a box is built. And for this one, probably it won't even get that.)
> And who knows, maybe I can do on-the-fly transcoding or something (ok, not
> really.)
as they say, the faster the better, don't get anything less than a
3200+, but get as fast as you can budget.
> The capture card is a pcHDTV HD-3000, using the antenna that directv
> installed for me (did a free hd upgrade deal a while back) and I've got an
> old dvd reader to put in.
I've got one, great card.
> The tv is a samsung 56" dlp, fed off vga (1920x720) although I -think- the
> dtv hidef receiver has a vga port (so I could feed this in via dvi) and I'll
> have a free component input where the standalone dvd player is right now.
>
> Any suggestions are welcome.
Lets see your current hardware and I'll be able to give you a better
idea of what I think you should do.
>(For the record, the newegg price on all that -
> without the tv, dvd or capture card - is about $900, with the drives and cpu
> taking most of it. And there is $40 worth of mailins, plus whatever free
> stuff they offer.)
gotta love newegg....
--
Steve
More information about the mythtv-users
mailing list