[mythtv-users] First Stab at a Shopping List

Rod Smith mythtv at rodsbooks.com
Fri Apr 13 15:00:32 UTC 2007


On Friday 13 April 2007 09:31, David Frascone wrote:
> I dropped some ramblings and the first stab at a path for me to take to
> get my wife hooked on MythTV -- please let me know if I'm heading in the
> right direction.
>
> I think the only open question is, what kind of IR receiver should I
> get?  Since my "dream" setup will have it built into the case, I'd need
> something here that will eventually either move to a bedroom with a
> shuttle-type front end, or just be a throw-away part.  Cheaper the better.
>
>
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/User:Codemonkey

A few things spring to mind:

1) Your existing 80GB disk might be OK for modest SD recording but will be
   inadequate for recording more than about 10 hours of HD content (less,
   actually, since you'll have to devote some space to software installation).
   Of course, you can expand this in the future; however, if you want to add
   disk space you'll need to either use Linux's LVM facility or the new
   ability, in the MythTV SVN branch, to use multiple recording directories.
   If you replace the disk you'll have to copy everything.

2) The 2GHz CPU will most likely be inadequate for HD playback. I've got a
   3.06GHz Celeron-D that's barely adequate -- it can play back an HD stream
   (to an NTSC set; I haven't yet gotten an HD TV set), but it produces brief
   pauses if the computer is doing just about anything else. If your
   motherboard can accept faster CPUs, you could upgrade your CPU later with
   relative ease, but if not you'll need to replace the motherboard (and
   perhaps, therefore, the RAM and video card) to get a working HD setup.

3) I've got a pair of pcHDTV HD3000s, and my opinion of them is very low.
   Their QAM reception (needed for recording unencrypted digital cable) is
   very poor for me; in fact, they produce unwatchable video, containing
   ~1/2-second bursts of audio and clear picture alternating with
   unintelligible pixellation and silence. This is a known problem with this
   card and QAM, although it seems to interact with other hardware -- some
   people have found "magical" combinations that work well, but so far I
   haven't. NTSC reception is better, but still bad compared to other NTSC
   tuners I've got. The NTSC tuner is a framegrabber design, which imposes a
   hefty CPU load on NTSC encoding. This last isn't necessarily 100% bad,
   since you've also got more control and can encode directly to the more
   compact MPEG-4 format; but with your 2GHz CPU it'll absolutely squash any
   modest hope you might have had of watching HD content while recording SD
   content. All this said, the pcHDTV 5500 may be improved, although I believe
   it's still got a framegrabber NTSC tuner. I'd recommend you consider an
   HDHomerun (an external dual-tuner Ethernet device) or AVerMedia AVerTVHD
   A180 (an internal PCI device) instead. Neither has a built-in NTSC tuner,
   so you'll need to supplement these with something like a Hauppauge PVR-150
   or PVR-250. These particular Hauppauge models have hardware MPEG-2
   encoders, so they'll impose little CPU load. FWIW, I've got an AVerMedia
   AVerTVHD A180 and its QAM reception is fine.

-- 
Rod Smith
http://www.rodsbooks.com


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