[mythtv-users] 138" diagonal -- now I really need HD!!

[Larry on the Dell]

Rob Greene wrote:
> We've been finishing off our basement for ... it seems like forever.
> A few weeks ago, the theater became functional (11.5' diagonal).  We
> are using a PS3 as the Blu-Ray player and now as a UPnP player from
> the MythTV backend.
>
> My current capture cards are a Hauppauge PVR 250 and 350.  I have no
> MythTV frontend and don't really plan on building one.  I am using the
> PS3 in the theater, hoping to use Windows Media Center from the PCs,
> and Hauppauge MediaMVP's for our older TVs, and that covers everything
> I currently have.
>
> Once I got the Myth backend functioning and assigned a static IP
> address (which is apparantly the key to UPnP), the UPnP server "just
> worked" for the PS3.  I'll need to play with it a bit, but I was
> pretty happy about that.  And amazingly, the SDTV looked passable on
> the large screen.  Fuzzy yes, but better than I expected.
>
> *Obviously* I now need HD.  I have some questions and I'm just not
> finding answers when I Google... that pesky get the right word combo
> thing, I'm sure.  :-)
>
> 1) My hardware is an older Compaq W6000.  Dual Xeon, 1.6GHz (IIRC)
> with 512MB ram and somewhere around 480GB set aside for Myth.  (I had
> another 200GB drive but it just died unfortunately.)  Is this capable
> of handling HD?  I know that HD is a lot more info, but I don't think
> the machine is really impacted except for when it transcodes or
> commercial flags video.  Haven't a clue with HD.  And, approximately
> what per hour for disk usage??   (For SDTV it is somewhere around
> 2.2GB per hour as I recall.)
>
> 2) What HD capture card to get?  I like the idea of the dual tuner
> card -- and this one at $139 sounds good
> (http://www.digitalconnection.com/products/video/fusion7dex.asp) as
> well as sounds like it will work under Linux and Myth.  I think I'll
> be pulling from cable HD (QAM, I assume).  I'd try antenna but one of
> the reasons we have cable is that we only got 1 broadcast TV station
> clearly.  PCI ok for the card?  From what I could see, I'm not certain
> that the PCIe cards are supported that well (not to mention the
> current machine doesn't have it).
>
> 3) If I ended up using a couple of HD cards and one does terrestrial
> antenna and the other does cable TV, do I have that option in Myth?  I
> was a little surprised that it appears to be a only one choice type of
> option in the general settings and did not appear to be tied to my
> cards.  (I will also state that I've only got one card in my server at
> this time, so hopefully I am flat-out wrong!)
>
> Oh yeah, I am using MythDora and so far, I'm happy with the distro approach.
>
> Thanks for any info!
> -Rob
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>   
Rob,

I'll just add my experience with OTA  analogue vs digital.  I live only 
~25 miles south of the Missoula Montana TV transmitter sites but I am 
shadowed by a mountain from direct line of sight.  I suffered the first 
few years with extremely degraded ghost ridden NTSC reception.   A year 
or so ago,  I upgraded the family TV and switched to ATSC OTA digital.   
I went from grade "C"  to grade "A" excellent crystal clear reception.   
I did find that I had to replace my exterior TV antenna with a four bay 
bat wing (four X wire antennas in front of a mesh reflector)  and UHF 
preamp which I purchased from solid signal.  The antenna has a small 
wind load and looks extremely rugged suitable for our Montana winters.   
I'd consider giving OTA another try if I were you.

Larry