[mythtv-users] New to building computers and MythTV

[Phill Wiggin]

On 3/21/07, Jon Sustar <digitaldoodler at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey everyone,
>
> I've never built a computer before, but I'm really interested in building my
> own DVR that will run MythTV.  MythTV sounds great, but I'm not sure what
> type of hardware configuration I should use.  I know it doesn't take much to
> run MythTV, but I'm still not sure about what tuners are compatible with
> which motherboards, whether I need a graphics card, etc.
>
> Has anyone constructed a MythTV box that is under or around $600 that would
> be willing to share their specs?
>
> Any help on how to research this would be very much appreciated.
>
> Thanks.
>

A couple of quick starting points.
1) Google is your friend.
2) The users list is archived and searchable at:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/

Sometimes it's tough to find what you're looking for w/o knowing the
right terms to search for, but a quick search for 'requirements' on
gossamer (2, above) will give you quite a few results that will
probably be of value.

That said, Myth's requirements are very dependant on what you want to
do.  What types of broadcasts do you want to record, HiDef or Standard
TV.  Record TV for watching later?  How many channels will you want to
record at the same time?  How much TV do you want to store for later
viewing?  How many TVs do you want to be able to use Myth on?

This scenario's been covered in the mailing list pretty often, but in
the end, each person's setup is dependent on exactly what they want to
do with the system.

I don't normally suggest that people take discussions offline, since
the archived list helps other people later on.  But, since this has
been covered quite a bit, If you'd like to email me offline I'd be
happy to help you.

For what it's worth, for standard-def TV, my system looks like:

Backend:
Ahlon 3000+ AMD64
2GB RAM (overkill)
750GB HD
2x Hauppauge pvr250

Frontend:
Athlon 3000+ AMD64
256M RAM
nVidia 5200 agp (DVI-out to TV)
40G HD (going diskless soon)

Frontend:
Xbox v1.0
XBMC/mythXBMC (previously used Xebian/Myth)


--Phill W.