[mythtv-users] Hardware Suggestions/Sanity Check

Steven Adeff adeffs.mythtv at gmail.com
Tue Apr 11 17:48:52 UTC 2006


On 4/10/06, John Patrick Hoke <john.hoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> So after having a standard def mythbox running for a year or two, and
> my wife and daughter "buying in" and liking it (I think the selling
> point was making DVDs of the lil' one's cartoons that she could watch
> on her iBook...) I have been granted permission from on high (read:
> wife) to build a better system...

congrats! I'm sure the flowers on Mothers Day helped ;-)


> I will be converting my current FE/BE into a dedicated Master BE:
>         P4 3.0ghz CPU
>         1 GB RAM
>         1x PVR150
>         1x PVR250
>         4x 250gb SATA HD RAID 5 for DVD storage (/video/dvd) (New -- Adding
> to system)
>         2x 250gb PATA for video storage and music
>         1x 100gb PATA HD for OS and assorted crap (web server, MySQL, mail
> server, home dirs, etc)
>         1x DVD-RW+/-
>
> Question for the BE:
>   1) What would be the recommendation for RAID Card. I have seen HW
> based raid cards > $300. Could I get away with a SW RAID with this
> config for the video storage? I have a large digitized collection and
> I do not want to lose it (again...)

software raid, I've got a 3 drive one now and it works great, uses
less than 5% CPU at full throttle on my 3200+.

As well, RAID 5 all your 250GB drives and create folders under that
for dvd's, videos, etc. Here's why. 1) Speed, the more drives in the
array the faster. Not necesarily something you will need, but hey, why
not. 2) flexibility of what you put on, "damn, I've only got 3gigs
left on the "DVD" drive, but 50 on the videos drive...." 3) With two
RAID 5 arrays you essentially lose 2 drives to parity, with one you
lose one drive to parity, and you most likely won't lose 2 drives at
once, so save some money and RAID5 all 6 of the drives.

>   2) I prefer FC, and noticed that there were issues with FC5 and
> 0.19 reported to the list. Have these started to shake themselves out
> as both FC5 and Myth 19 "mature" (wrong term for versions so new,
> but ... anyway). I can go either the compile myself or use ATRpms
> route... and my current system is a hybrid (Used Axel's stuff to get
> started, then started compiling myth myself so I can use SVN and
> check it out...)

is this a question? Compiling Myth is easy once you have the correct
devel libraries. I'm a Debian person myself, so I'd of course say go
with that, but if your comfortable with FC and can get Myth running
without issue stick with it. That said, theres plenty of help out
there for other distro's (Suse for example as well). I've found my
main fe/be has been very friendly to me jumping around SVN versions
with no hicups as well, so a proper running system should be flexible
in this regard.


> I will also be creating a BE/FE system for my living room. This will
> be for capturing (unencrypted) HD content from cable company and
> displaying it and other content on the master BE on a Samsung 5078W
> DLP HDTV over a gigabit ethernet connection in the house. For the
> record, I have tried via FireWire on my 3250 and cannot get it to
> work. Blue Ridge Cable said they do not support this (firewire) at
> this time, and told me the FCC does not require that they do so. (I
> still have issues with that statement).

They're liars and you should report them to the FCC.

> What I am thinking is:
>         AMD64 3000+

get at least a 3200+ If you can afford it, jump up to faster. I've got
a 3200+ and its great, but for an extra $20-50 you can go faster, and
I think its worth it.

>         KN1 Extreme MoBo (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?
> Item=N82E16813135175)

god do I love this motherboard. I have one in my "fileserver" and its awesome.

>         2GB RAM

you could live with 512MB, 1GB is more than enough, save some money
here and put it towards the CPU.

>         2x500 GB SATA Drives (via LVM)

Good choice, they're so cheap now. you can find Seagate 500GB SATA
drives with 5yr warranties and 16MB cache for under $250. I see assume
this will be your "it can crash" recording drive for both backends?

>         HD Capture Card:
>                 Either an AirStar-HD5000AV (http://www.cyberestore.com/
> product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=103)
>                 or an Dvico FusionHDTV Lite w/Remote (http://
> www.cyberestore.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=192)

Avermedia A180. I've got two, along with my pcHDTV HD3000 card. At
~$70 its hard to beat for QAM reception. You could get two for the
price of the above ;-)

>         Sound output via SPDIF on MoBo to my home theater system

works great I might add ;-) (did I say how much l like that motherboard?)

>         Video Card: some NVIDIA 6600 card (PCI Express)

You could get away with a FX5300 as well, and no fan! (FX5300 is the
5200 for PCIE)

>         1x DVD-RW

c'mon, no blueray ;-)

>         Case: Silverstone LC20M ... or possibly LC16M

I LOVE my LC16M. and it can hold 6 drives (mmmm, 6x500GB in
RAID5...droool...). The 20M is their new case, internally it looks
like a slightly rearranged 16M, both are gorgous on the outside, and I
don't know how you'll decide. Let the wife do it....

>          PSU: Silverstone ST40F

Again, an area where I would go large for future upgrade ability. As
well, look at other powersupply's. I've had great luck with Antec's
and they have some very quiet fan based powersupplies as well.
quietpc.com has a good selection of quiet powersupplies.


> The HDTV I am using has Component In, SVGA In, HMDI In, and others.
>
> Questions for FE
>         1) Is there a preference between the two HD Cards for the FE? I am
> leaning to the Dvico as it seems to support both HD and SD recording
> - - - if I am reading the literature correctly.

all the HD tuners do no analog SD compression. Your better off using
the PVR cards. Some SD channels you may receive through QAM depending
on your cable provider, not all though, so your still better off
having at least 1PVR, which you do in your other BE.

>         2) As I have always had combined FE/BE I am not sure about this...
> the recordings from the HD card, do they get recorded locally on the
> FE/BE box in the Living room, or can they be pushed over the network
> to the BE in the basement? If I can push the recordings over the wire
> to the BE, then I can have less HD in living room, less heat, and
> less fan noise :)

they will be recorded locally, but locally can be an NFS mounted
drive. so you could have 1 computer with your recording drives and
mount the recording drive to all your other BE's. HD streams are
relatively low bandwidth when it comes to 100/1000bT ethernet so it
shouldn't be an issue.

>         3) Are there any recommendations for a PCI Express video card that
> can push HDTV to this set?

any FX5300

>         4) Has anyone had good/bad experiences with this mobo for MythTV
> use? Is the CPU powerful enough?

My comments above in this regard (have I mentiond how much I....)


So, some thoughts overall. It sounds like you have the option to put
the existing P4 system somewhere where noise won't be an issue, and if
I read right, will only be a BE, no FE?
How many PCI slots are available in this machine?

I'd put all the tuners and harddrives in the backend. Let it worry
about handling the SW RAID, HD stream processing, commflagging, etc.
If you put an HD tuner in another BE that BE will be handling the
stream processing, etc.

this would even let you build a MicroATX based system for the new
frontend, which the wife may like better. It will also let you get
away with a slower CPU as it won't be required to do as much.

Another option is some HD purchase shuffling. Buy 4x500GB drives to
use in RAID5 (1500GB total without a spare) use the two PATA for your
recordings drive (500GB total, which should be enough considering you
archive shows you wish to keep to your archive drive). Overall not as
much space as the way you were going before, but you use less drive
space and less electricity. 500GB drives will only come down in price
and SW RAID5 is currently gaining the ability to add new drives and
grow the array. In a year you could probably buy a couple more 500GB
drives and just add them to the array and increase the archive storage
space.
This is something I've thought a lot about lately as its where I'm
heading personally as well. I've got about 2TB amongst ~10drives, and
I'm running out of room (I archive a lot of my recordings, and I've
got a lot of shows that have yet to come out on DVD archived), so I'm
looking at building a RAID5 array based on 500GB drives.

phew... I think thats all I have to say....

--
Steve


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