[mythtv-users] Initial foray into Mythtv

[Matthew Keefe]

> Jumping in late in the thread, you should consider that anything you buy
> should be re-usable if/when you upgrade the motherboard hardware. With that
> in mind, and the very real prospect that HD capable nvidia ION based
> packages are about to come over the horizon for about $300US, you should
> probably limit any purchases at present to hard drives until you know
> whether you will go ahead (Because down the road lies a dedicated mythbox,
> with a lot more capability than your present box could ever reach by
> upgrading, and your present box goes back to being the house file server!)
>
> Since you won't be doing high def *at present*, your hardware will work
> with analog  (cable). A 32Gig SSD would make a great OS store. Linux Mint is
> based on Fedora so go with mythdora. That way you will not be lost or
> stymied by funny little differences.
>
> Create separate partitions for /home, /var and /, so that you can mess with
> one without killing data on the others. 'Messing' includes a complete
> reinstall! You may want to create a separate partition for /usr/local, and
> install myth to /usr/local/bin stc.
>
> For various reasons you should symlink the /var/lib/mysql folder to a
> folder on your /home partition. If you get a runaway error which spews error
> messages into /var, it will not destroy your mythconverg database if the
> partition fills completely. The boot errors which you get in that case are
> sufficiently misleading that you can easily and utterrly destroy any
> possibility of recovery of anything on the partition. This is especially
> soul-destroying if you have installed everything, lock stock and barrel to
> one partition, 'a-la-windows'.  So, don't DO THAT!
>
>
> The other drive is the big one, or two for storage...Since mythtv lets you
> add storage transparently, the only limit is your drive controller!
>
> As noted, the bottleneck is playback. If you are just playing for now, then
> don't bother with expensive upgrades, until you are sure what you want to
> do, and where you setup is headed. If you want to add tuners, I would
> suggest external or PCI based. For North America I consider the hdhomerun
> the cat's meow for Over-The-Air HD. The PVR-500 is great for analog cable
> capture. you WILL want 2 tuners for 2 channel capture. I have 4 tuners, 2 HD
> and 2 analog, and there are at least a couple of people with 6. The max I
> remember being mentioned is 9 but I may be wrong.
>
> Geoff


Thanks for such an information rich reply  :)  I fear, at this point, some
of it is beyond my understanding.  I suppose that's part of my wanting to
forge ahead, I learn better by seeing and doing than just reading alone.  Of
course, I will no doubt need to read quite a bit during the whole process.
I hope none of you will get too agitated with my forthcoming questions :-P

Some of the hardware is still in flux at the moment, so we'll see.  The
computer I'm considering using now is my play computer, one I use to try new
things out on.  It looks like it could be cheaper to buy a new box from
state surplus though, so I may go that route instead.  We'll see, I still
have to do some research on that particular system.

I agree about that nVidia Ion, I'm anxious to see how it turns out.  I have
heard some initial reports, however, that indicate it may not be as saucy as
it appears.  I hope they are preemptive, but then all reports at this point
are somewhat ahead of their time.  I don't mind spending some money now to
learn how to work with MythTV and then replace the hardware in the future if
the Ion, or something like it.  In any case, I would think that those kinds
of systems would need a backend...and thus the role for my computer now :)
Of course, being green, I may have some false assumptions lurking in that
opinion.

Also, small point, but Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu.  They're working on
release 7 now which will be based on Jaunty.  My understanding is that
Mythbuntu already runs on top of Jaunty.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!
-- 


,./`*`~Matthew~`*`\.,
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