[mythtv-users] MythTV vs. Windows Media Center

Reynolds, Brian Brian.Reynolds at fiserv.com
Sat Feb 12 02:38:03 UTC 2011


-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Ben Kamen
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 5:16 PM
To: Discussion about MythTV
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] MythTV vs. Windows Media Center

On 2/11/2011 4:12 PM, Reynolds, Brian wrote:
> Once I have a huge storage solution and a bunch of tuners, that won't
be a problem anymore... so they might start scheduling stuff and stop
watching live TV.  They don't have a DVR at their mom's house, so they
haven't become addicted to the ability to skip the commercials like I
have. :)

That's easily fixed in Myth because you can set a fixed number of
episodes to keep while new recordings expire old ones and the stack of N
just shuffles.

-Ben
_______________________________________________

Ben,

Yes, I understand that.  I can do the same thing (limit the number of
episodes to keep) with the cable company's DVR.  I didn't mean that it
would be a PROBLEM for my kids to schedule a bunch of stuff.  I'm saying
that with so much storage space and more tuners, I would feel fine
allowing them to schedule stuff to watch later when they come to my
house (or even watching in a browser from their mom's house... both have
PC's in their rooms at their mom's).  My current DVR only has an 80GB
drive.  I was thinking of buying a 1TB DVR expander for it, but the fact
that the DVR only has 2 tuners is a big problem also.

While we're on the subject of storage space...

I'm planning to build the machine with two 1TB 7200 RPM drives
configured in a RAID-0 to maximize throughput on the serial reads/writes
that will be required for playback/recording.   I'm thinking that this
will be needed for recording (or watching live TV, with a buffer) so
many HD streams simultaneously and also the possibility of streaming
several pre-recorded streams out to the extenders/front-ends/browsers.
I've chosen a case with enough space for additional drives for more
throughput/storage-space (just in case it's needed) and/or configuring
them as a RAID-1+0 for redundancy, although I don't feel that the
content will really justify a need for redundancy.  As Ben Kamen says...
television isn't THAT important (but it's a pretty funny thing to say on
a list that is dedicated to recording TV).

I considered 5400 RPM drives to make it quieter, but I'm thinking that
for this much bandwidth, I might need drives with a higher sustained
transfer rate.  I suppose I could go with four 5400 RPM drives and
(hopefully) direct the output of each pair of tuners to their own drive?
(thoughts?)  I also thought about 10,000 RPM drives, but they aren't
cheap at big sizes and they aren't very quiet either.  I want my machine
to sit in my living room under the TV, so it can't be TOO loud.

Below, I've pasted a link to my "Wish List" on NewEgg that lists the
components I've selected (minus the Ceton card... NewEgg doesn't sell
them).  Some of them show "out of stock" now, but they were in-stock
when I created the list.  I may reconsider the case because of its
depth.  I would really like to find a lower wattage CPU, but the only
motherboards I see (on NewEgg, at least) that meet my expandability
criteria with so many PCIe slots and spacing for the double-width
(fanless) heatsink on the video card use a core-i7.  Of course, I would
appreciate your critique of my list of components.

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=1
5148745

Brian



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