[mythtv-users] HD Woes

Yeechang Lee ylee at pobox.com
Mon Jan 29 20:32:11 UTC 2007


Jarod Wilson <lists at wilsonet.com> says:
> I prefer quad-core... :)
> 
> # grep "model name" /proc/cpuinfo
> model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU           @ 2.66GHz
> model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU           @ 2.66GHz
> model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU           @ 2.66GHz
> model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU           @ 2.66GHz

Bah. Real men prefer real server-CPU goodness. From my new storage
server:

model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           E5310  @ 1.60GHz
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           E5310  @ 1.60GHz
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           E5310  @ 1.60GHz
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           E5310  @ 1.60GHz

This server stores all my MythTV recordings on a ginormous RAID 6
array. I went with a single Clovertown quad-core CPU over two
Woodcrest dual-core CPUs because a) it was slightly cheaper (I was
already spending a ridonkulous amount of money) and b) left a socket
in the two-socket motherboard open, in case I ever want to run seven
transcode/realtime commflag jobs at once as opposed to the current
three or four,[1] plus a VMware Server VM, a MythTV slave backend, and
the requisite CIFS and RAID background threads. I went with 1.60GHz,
the lowest clockspeed available, since a) again, it was cheaper and b)
given a choice between higher clockspeeds and more physical cores the
latter made more sense in this context. I've not yet had to regret my
choice. After a full year dealing with incessant IOBOUND issues and
video skips when watching a HD recording while recording more than one
HD stream at the same time, it has been wonderful to not have to worry
about these issues any more.[2]

Eventually I intend to move the two FireWire cable boxes to this
server and turn it into the master MythTV backend, and turn the
current frontend/master backend into just a frontend. I haven't
decided what to do with the ATSC capture card; I may move it as well
and see if an indoor antenna can still function from inside a
closet. In the likely eventuality it doesn't, I may either keep it
with the frontend or invest in a HDHomeRun.

[1] I probably could do more, but I haven't seen the need to raise the
limit to higher than three given that I only have three video-input
sources.

[2] I still get the occasional burst of a few seconds' worth of
IOBOUNDs every couple of days, but each set is *very* brief. The
lengthy thread starting at
<URL:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/249300#249300>
offers hope that even these will go away eventually, perhaps with a
variant of <URL:http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/1660>. Moving the
MySQL database to the storage server itself is another possible
solution.

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US


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