<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
> Good afternoon Greg,<br>
><br>
> Thank-you for your reply, I just have a few questions.<br>
><br>
> - If I'm running Nova-Ts, why would I not be running commercial skipping? I<br>
> am running it on all my recordings, and it appears to work (I don't actually<br>
> use a MythTV frontend, so I have never actually tried skipping the adverts),<br>
> is there something I don't know about the Nova Ts?<br>
<br>
I though Nova-Ts where DVB and Commercial skipping on that did not<br>
work well (in the UK at least).<br>
<br>
Commercial skipping involves quite a bit of processing power (looking<br>
at each frame I believe) which is quite a bit of IO/CPU work - which<br>
is not what you are aiming for.<br>
<br>
If this is important, you might look at the recent posts involving<br>
stepping down the CPU Speed and getting a CPU that supports that well<br>
combined with a decent motherboard chipset (ie a low power one).<br>
<br>
But if you are not skipping the adds why bother? Or have I missed something?<br>
<br></blockquote><div> </div><div>Good point, I could quite easily live without it! I've always left it on as that's the default<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
> - Assuming I turn commercial detection off, would you agree that anything<br>
> over 800MHz (the slowest Atom) would be fine for recording & file sharing?<br>
<br>
Others might be able to answer is 800Mhz is too low, but I would be<br>
surprised if it did not work ok. This assumes your file sharing is a<br>
little lightweight. SMB (Samba) sharing lots of large files across<br>
loads of clients might not work too well!<br>
<br>
There appear to be lost of reports of success with fan-less Atom<br>
boards - I cannot remember hearing of an issue, but you would need to<br>
check!<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br>I was thinking of getting the PVR bundle from <a href="http://mini-itx.com">mini-itx.com</a> (<a href="http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=38">http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=38</a>), but I think I may be better off with something a little more powerful, as I will be sharing these large video files to anywhere up to three clients. I'm thinking about getting a Jetway J7F4 board (<a href="http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=2#j7f4k">http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=2#j7f4k</a>) - 1.2GHz should be enough I think, with 1Gb of RAM.<br>
</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
> - Do you know if USB tuners draw less power than PCI ones?<br>
<br>
I would assume yes as the USB spec power is actually quite low (5w?)<br>
and you can get twin tuners, whilst my 2xNova-T's draw about 5w each.<br>
Not sure what the 500 pulls.<br>
<br>
I may be able to tell you in a few weeks when I work out which dual<br>
USB tuner with remove IR sensor to get.<br>
<br>
> - Does recording more than one channel at once make much of a difference? At<br>
> the moment I have the two tuners (on a single PCI card) set to record up to<br>
> 3 channels each at the same time (to cover the over lap at the start/end of<br>
> two recordings on the same channel). Theoretically (although it's never<br>
> happened in practice) at the moment my set up could record six TV channels<br>
> at once.<br>
<br>
It will make a small difference;<br>
<br>
- Nova'ts will probably draw a little more power (minimal)<br>
- Backend/System has to shut that content off to storage (minimal)<br>
<br>
Call it a watt or 2 at a guess. It would be worth a test to record 6<br>
things at once and watch what happens, as here there will be a<br>
reasonable amount to shift IO wise.<br>
<br>
Assuming 2Gb/hr per recording (av SD on my stuff roughly, YMMY) =<br>
12288 Mb an hour = 3.41 Mb/Sec. You would be starting to approach the<br>
speed of 100Mbit networking and the network file protocol ie I only<br>
get slightly more than this on a Samba shares on my SP13000 on a<br>
100Mbit wired network.<br>
<br>
So it depends if you really need to be able to record 6 channels at once.<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br>Hmm, I'm tempted to replace my tuner too now, plug it into a USB port internally (the case I'm thinking of getting has two internal, designed for WiFi - <a href="http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=54">http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=54</a>) and find a hole big enough to put the areal lead through :)<br>
<br>Thanks again Greg, I shall let you know how I get on!<br></div></div>