[mythtv-users] Suggestions for a stable backend

[Simon Hobson]

Gary Buhrmaster <gary.buhrmaster at gmail.com> wrote:

> You need to decide if it is worth debugging the hardware,
> or you simply wish to replace everything other than the
> power cord (and maybe that, just to be sure).

Indeed, at work we often swap out whole machines because it's just not worth the cost of an engineer's time to diagnose such problems - plus the user gets an upgrade and so on. Occasionally (if things go quiet) one of the helldesk guys will dive into the pile and pull a few to bits, and then build a bitsa machine for his own use :)

For my backend, I've got an HP MicroServer N40L. I thought these were discontinued but I noticed eBuyer had another offer on them not long ago - with cashback offers from HP you could get them for between £100 and £150 ! 2G RAM, the smallest SSD I could find for OS and DB, and a couple of hard disks. Tuners are two HVR1300 DVT-T PCIe cards - I only use Freeview here. It's a bit underpowered at times (can only transcode to H264 at about 1/3 of real time), and there's still occasional stutters in playback - but mostly it's been fine for me (certainly for the cost).
Also low power and quiet - but limited expansion capability.