[mythtv-users] CableCard Chain.

[Michael T. Dean]

On 07/26/2012 10:46 AM, Thomas Mashos wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Eric Sharkey wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 9:47 AM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>>>   I [] could do a 4-tuner + 300hrs space for less than $399.99...
>> I'm dubious of that claim.  You'd need half that much for an InfiniTV alone.
> He isn't that far off. Newegg has a shellshocker system today for $289
> that would make a pretty nice system. Would need a tuner and a
> slightly larger hard drive to meet the above requirements (only has a
> 1TB drive right now). If you buy things on sale and use multirec to
> get to 4 tuners then under $400 is doable. I'd probably bump it up to
> $500 though and get slightly better storage or a cable card tuner.

FWIW, I was talking 4 physical tuners.  I wasn't talking about 
CableCARD-compatible because a) I'm voting with my wallet and refusing 
to support the cable companies and b) my local provider (basically TWC) 
locks everything down, so CableCARD is useless for me.  Two HVR-2250's 
are still $200, but that leaves $200 for the case/psu/cpu/memory/HDD.  I 
typically spend about $150 on my systems, not including HDD and tuners, 
so if we say 300 hours is 2TB, I might actually need another $50 or so, 
if I'm buying at a specific time versus buying when the time is right.

As for "time is right", the last MythTV box I bought (end of last 
year--Athlon II X2 260; 4GB DDR3; 430W 80 PLUS PSU; all-black, not-ugly 
case) was $186.94, including a $16.99 refurbished HDD (it's a 
frontend-only system so didn't need much, and after the floods, new 
drive prices were higher than I was willing to pay for a boot-only 
disk), and I got a $15 newegg gift certificate with the CPU, and $20 
mail-in-rebate (MIR) on the PSU, $15 MIR on the motherboard, and $10 MIR 
on the case.  So, after rebates and the gift card value, I actually 
spent $126.94 (including that $17 hard drive).  If you take out the 
$16.99 to put toward a 2TB HDD, that means I spent $109.95 on the system 
without HDD.  That would leave about $90 for the 2TB HDD, but they're 
about $99.99 right now.

With the InfiniTV at $189.99 (instead of $200), that would give me 
enough to cover the $99 2TB HDD and stay within the $399.99.  The 
HVR-2250s are $98.98 each (including shipping - 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116037 ), so 
that means I'd actually be spending $407.90 on the system with 2250s.

The difference is that my system isn't small (but it is quiet--it's my 
kitchen MythTV box).  And, in truth, I'd actually have multiple HDDs and 
more than just 2TB of storage (and I happen to have 6 physical tuners 
for my OTA), but my point was just that you could actually do a nice, 
equivalent-capability MythTV box for basically the same cost as their 
top-end (which is still too low-end for my tastes) TiVo hardware--if you 
do it right.

Mike