[mythtv-users] Piece together a system from....

[Dewey Smolka]

On 11/4/07, r jefferey <rjefferey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I would love to have a MythTV PVR that is pieced
> together from stuff I have on hand but I am realistic.
> I'll just need some help finding what I need to
> complete the system. If anyone out there has time,
> please look over my list and let me know if any of
> this stuff is worth messing with.

> Small HP Pavilion case and power supply (need
> motherboard) (atx)
>
> AMD Athlon XP2400+ thoroughbred core (462pin socket A)
> processor

No problem for SD but will have trouble decoding HD without Xvmc.

> Two 256MB DDR DIMM PC2700 266MHz memory sticks

Mythtv will work with less than 512 MB RAM but I'd recommend 512 as the minimum.

>
> Maxtor DiamonMax 10 300GB internal Hard Drive,
> ATA-133/150MBps/7200rpm

No problem.

> I also have (in a tall case)
>
> ADM Sempron 2800+ Socket A thoroughbred

Same as above -- will be fine for SD but underpowered for HD. It may
work with Xvmc but I'm not sure.

> Ultra DDR memory 256 Mb PC2700 333 Mhz

Double that and you should be fine.

> Radeon 7000 32MB DDR Rv6DE-NA2 AGP 2x/4x

You'll save yourself some time and some hair if you use an
nvidia-based card. FX5x00 or 6x00 series cards are golden and cheap.
Plus, only nvidia cards currently support Xvmc (which uses the gfx
card rather than CPU for video decoding).

> Winfast TV2000 XP Expert

Not sure if this card is supported but even if it is I assume it's a
framegrabber, meaning the CPU needs to do all the heavy lifting.
You'll be doing yourself a favor if you use a hardware encoding card
instead, eg a Hauppage 150/250/500, for SD. For HD have a look at the
HDHomerun -- it's external so it saves you a precious PCI slot, and it
supports two inputs.

> NEC DVD R/RW CD-R R/RW ND-3540A
>
> I also have an old HP 8750C that could be sacrificed.
> It has a Intel PIII 667MHz (Soc370) with 512mb memory.

With some work and some luck you could get a functioning SD-only
system on this platform but I wouldn't recommend it considering the
other gear you have. It would only work if you were only running
processes necessary to Mythtv, and were using a hardware encoding
card. Even then menu operations would be sluggish, com flagging and
transcoding would take forever, and the whole machine would just feel
muddy and unresponsive.

Good luck.