[mythtv-users] Newb Question

[Taylan Pince]

On 12-Sep-06, at 8:15 PM, Andrew Davis wrote:

> You'd be surprised, but here's the breakdown (sans pricing since  
> I'm not
> allowed to share my vendors pricing publically):
>
> Silverstone Aluminum case LC17
> Antec 550W NEO Low noise HE P/S
> Motherboard (955X7AA-8EKRS2 w/ 8 port SATAII RAID5/6 option)
> Intel DualCore 3.2Ghz (BX80553940T)
> Upgraded Silverstone heatsink/fan (Nitrogon NT06)
> 4Gb Corsair DDR2 PC5400 memory (4x1GB)
> Memory heatsink/fins
> 3x500 SATAII WD 16Mb cache HD w/ 3 year warranty
> Plextor 16x (every format but HD/BR) SATA DVD drive
> 3.5'' USB2/FireWire400 & 800/52 type media reader, CPU + Ambient  
> Temp reader
> Leadtek Winfast 128Mb DDR 16xPCI-E VGA/DVI/HDTV
> Happauge WinTV PVR 500 MCE Kit (w/ remote)
>
> Grand total was $2500. Priced out at Newegg was $2250 + shipping...
>
> I didn't think it was all that much til I realized it wouldn't
> completely replace my Cox tuner/DVR nor my current DVD unit since its
> also my speaker output/amp.
>
> Oh yeah... and it wasn't *just* going to run MythTV, but also run
> Evolution, Firefox, etc as my normal Linux box... as well as some BB &
> Nagios monitoring. And I was considering having it store my ripped  
> movie
> collection and making it available to my system at work (I have a 10Mb
> Cox business feed at home and three T1's trunked for 4.5Mbps at work).
>
> Gabe Rubin wrote:
>> On 9/12/06, Andrew Davis <andrew at nccomp.com> wrote:
>>
>>> nice box and such. Hmmm... perhaps I should rethink this before I  
>>> drop
>>> over $2000 in h/w...
>>
>> $2000 bucks for hardware is very much overkill (unless that includes
>> your TV).  I can't imagine how you can spend that much on a mythbox.
>> I would think $1000 could get you a very kick ass system.

For my myhthtv box, I bought the cheapest ready to go PC from my  
local store. 512MB ram, intel dual core 2.66Ghz and a 160GB hard  
drive, 16x dual layer dvd writer. Added a PVR-350 and a secondary  
320GB drive, the total came to $600 CAD. I later added an improved  
heatsink at $60, which pretty much silenced it completely. It has  
integrated video, I was thinking about getting an Nvidia card, but I  
don't think I need it.

I had initially budgeted this project at $1,000, but there really is  
no need to spend that much money. Unless you are really going to push  
the machine with other tasks, the cheapest solution is usually the  
best. I might be wrong, but I think most of the load is handled by  
the TV tuner card, and all your machine has to do is to write the  
data on the disk fast enough.

I use the box for watching TV on a 17'' Samsung LCD, recording TV  
series/movies, and I can stream to my PowerMac G5 with a 30'' Dell  
LCD very easily. I am also running Apache and Samba servers, do  
occasional web development tests.

I don't know much about PC's, Linux or MythTV, but from my experience  
in the last couple of months, there really is no point in spending so  
much money on this project.

Hope it helps, and please someone correct me if I am wrong. I might  
very well be!

Taylan