[mythtv-users] YA Frontend recommendations thread

Rich West Rich.West at wesmo.com
Tue May 15 18:03:21 UTC 2007


Jack Madison wrote:
> First, sorry for bringing up a topic that seems to come up a lot, but it
> just doesn't seem to be answered for what I'm looking for.  If I missed
> it, go ahead and e-slap me (and point me to the answer).
>
> I am looking for a FE only box.  RCA, s-video or component out (all my
> old HDTV has).  SPDIF or any other way to get 5.1 or better surround
> sound.  Something that looks like it belongs with the TV and is
> reasonably quiet.  Enough power for SD only.  Under $300 (I'll
> eventually have ~5 of them).  True MythTV front end.
>
> No xbox solutions, I've tried them and am not happy.  I'd rather not
> have a Mac solution either.
>
> Preference would be for new (cheap-o or build it myself), but I'm not
> against used e-bay solution.
>
> I've seen a lot of "this should work" stuff, and some other posts
> describing things that sorta work, or have issues (ie the MSI's 6150
> board thread) so any first hand "I did this and it works great" replies
> are welcomed.

I have three Shuttle SK21G
(http://hq1.shuttle.com/products_page03.jsp?PLLI=25&PI=85) boxes as
frontend-only systems with 1 512MB stick of ram, an XFX GeForce 6200
(fanless) agp card, an AMD Sempron64 3000+ processor, and varying drives
(old 6GB laptop drive in one, an old 20GB laptop drive in another, and
an older 80GB IDE drive in the third).  Ideally, these would be
diskless, but they work great as they are.

I had to get over the hurdle of buying a non-atx motherboard; of buying
a "custom" motherboard.  But, for the $119 I paid for the refurbished
barebones system off of the Shuttle ebay store, it was a no-brainer. 
The advantage of the Shuttle systems is that they are q-u-i-e-t.  They
have a nice "ICE" system that cools via a heat-pipe setup.  The result
is that the case fan (which also cools the heat-pipe setup) runs between
900 and 1200 RPM.

The SK21G is a socket-754 based system with an AGP slot, which is a
little more dated.  I think everything (nearly everything) is 939 and PCIe.

-Rich




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