[mythtv-users] Motherboard / Video Card / Intel GMA X4500HD recommendations?

[Travis Tabbal]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Dan Armbrust <
daniel.armbrust.list at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm looking to dip my toes into the MythTV world, and would like some
> feedback from the veterans.
>
> Looking at Motherboard / video card choices - My current TV requires a
> DVI connection for high-quality output.  I'm sure my next TV will do
> HDMI.  So I want both of those.  I want to do audio to my surround
> sound system with an optical toslink connection, thought I could do a
> analog cable there.
>


Personally, the only video I will use with Myth right now is Nvidia. Their
stuff just works better in Linux, and VDPAU makes things even better.
Onboard is fine, I have one board with an integrated 8200 GPU and it does a
great job. Keep in mind that HDMI and DVI are the same as far as video is
concerned. HDMI can send sound as well, that's the only difference. And I
understand DVI can do it as well, but hardware and driver support is tricky.
HDMI/DVI converters are cheap and widely available, check monoprice.com. So
that will help some with your situation. How about this one?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131318&Tpk=m3n78

DVI, VGA, and HDMI ports, Optical TOSLink, and analog audio. I use one for
my bedroom frontend and it works great. If you're going to use it as a
combined FE/BE machine, it also has 5 SATA ports, so you can put lots of
drives in there if you ever want to. For the backend, remember to get a
second HDD/SDD for the OS and database to live on. Sharing the recordings
and OS/DB causes people problems, too much seeking. I used an old IDE 40GB
drive for the OS/DB and it helped a ton. I've also used a USB stick, others
have used CF cards with IDE or SATA adapters, lots of options.
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