[mythtv-users] Networked MythTV system

[Brett Kosinski]

>
> What have others done to develop a network at home?  I
> am  running Cat5 through the house so networking
> should not be an issue.


Sounds like the hardest part is done, then.  As long as you can do 100Mb/s
(and your network is switched), you should be fine, here.

In terms of hardware, should I try to get an xBox or
> get XvMc capable video cards?  My current inventory of
> computers:
>
> 2 PIII 800s
> 1 AMD 1.1 GHz Athlon
> 1 AMD 800MHz
> 2 PVR 350s
> 2 GeForce 5200s


Is this gear all available for Myth?  If so, I'd just get XvMC-capable video
cards and throw them in the PIIIs, as they're more than sufficient for doing
MPEG2 decoding (w/ hardware acceleration).  OTOH, if you want to play MPEG4s
or HD content, you might want something with more heft (in which case,
xboxes probably aren't sufficient, anyway).

In terms of hard drives, should I use SATA instead of
> PATA?  I plan to use Raid 10.  Are there any issues
> when trying to record and play multiple streams?  Can
> a recording be accessed by two or more TVs?  Thanks
> for any advice you can give.


1) PATA vs SATA is probably a non-issue.  Go with whatever you can find
cheaper. :)  I say this as Myth only does around 2Gb/hr for an SD stream, so
you're looking at 4 GB/hr with both tuners running simultaneously.  Any hard
drive you find will be able to handle this with ease.  If you plan to go HD
in the future, you might want to go with SATA, though, just to be on the
safe side.

2) As per 1), recording/playing multiple streams simultaneously should be a
non-issue.

3) Yup, a recording can be accessed by any frontends that want it, and
there's no limit to the number of simultaneous watchers (well, other than
bandwidth at the backend network interface).

Brett.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20061120/12e50365/attachment.htm