[mythtv-users] Upgrade Suggestions - currently on myth 0.21 with PVR150, 250, 350

[James Pifer]

On Sat, 2011-07-02 at 23:15 -0400, Raymond Wagner wrote:
> On 7/2/2011 18:36, James Pifer wrote:
> > Good suggestion. I'm in Charlotte, NC in the US. Cable provider is Time
> > Warner. No set top boxes, basic cable. Only HD is tuned by digital
> > tuners in my TVs. It's "regular" coaxial connections and I assume atsc.
> 
> If you're currently using analog cable, don't expect to be able to 
> continue using that in the long term.  Cable providers are all switching 
> over to digital to free up bandwidth for additional channels and 
> internet.  Start planning an upgrade for your frontends to support HD.  
> For digital broadcasts (ATSC) and unencrypted digital cable (clear QAM), 
> you're looking at MPEG2 at up to 18Mbps.  Any desktop AMD64 or Core2, as 
> well as most mobile processors of those architectures, should have 
> plenty of power to handle that content.

I suppose I could spend a couple hundred bucks and get a motherboard to
continue to use my current cards. When I'm forced to go fully digital
I'll probably go with HDHomeRun(s). 

> Unless you need to run multiple different operating systems 
> simultaneously, or need to ensure complete isolation for testing or 
> debugging purposes, it's best to avoid virtual machines and just run 
> directly on the base system.

I don't agree with you here, but to each his own. My backend does not
run X, and except for needing direct access to tuners, I believe would
run quite well as a paravirtualized vm. 

I really appreciate your input.

Thanks, 
James