[mythtv-users] Hardware for MythTV

Charles Wright cpwright at gmail.com
Mon Sep 6 18:06:27 UTC 2010


On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 11:00 AM, JCA <1.41421 at gmail.com> wrote:
>   After a couple of years with MythTV 0.20 I am about to embark in a
> full upgrade - not only MythTV but also the Linux box running it. What
> kind of specs should my new box aim to meet? My current box is built
> around a Pentium 4 at 3 GHz, with 1 GB of memory, an Nvidia FX 5200
> video card and a Hauppauge PVR 150 capture card. I would like to
> capture HD video (which implies a new capture card - which one?) and
> this platform does not play well (if at all) HD videos - at best they
> are jerky.
I have an HDHomeRun and HD-PVR.  I prefer the HDHomeRun because it has
generally been rock-solid reliable, and can be located anywhere in
relation to the machine; and gives you two tuners at an attractive
price point.  Unfortunately, it only works for Clear QAM channels.  My
HD-PVR crashes every few days (until the latest firmware the HD-PVR
itself would lock up, now it is causing a kernel BUG on 9.10).  Both
of them capture with excellent quality (the HDHomeRun captures the
MPEG off-the-cable without any encoding, so its quality is as good as
it gets).

>   Will getting a multicore box help here?
It will be useful if nothing else so that you have an additional CPU
for commercial flagging.

I currently have a separate FE from BE (I use an Aspire Revo for the
FE); and am not sure what I think about the setup.  One of the
disadvantages is that I'll need to upgrade both machines in unison.

Charles


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