[mythtv-users] Hardware questions
Reid Peryam
reid at bu.edu
Mon Aug 25 22:44:38 EDT 2003
I'm building this computer in order to act solely as a TiVo (for the
immediate future). Here goes.
1. Where the hell can I buy this PCI "video encoder" that is talked
about on MythTV.org's website? Haven't found one yet.
2. How good of a sound card should I buy? I was thinking of going
cheap, but then I was thinking that if the entire signal is going to be
coming from the computer to the television, I should probably have
something that can sound pretty good (6-channel for option of speakers).
3. Is a video card important at all? The encoder will probably be
pushing all of the bits, I'm thinking. I was thinking of going with two
separate cards, a video card and separate PCI TV tuner. If Graphics
aren't at all important then I'm thinking that an AGP 4x/8x motherboard
isn't needed?
4. Is the TV tuner important at all? It seems as though all you need it
for is the coaxial line-in port. Any other things I should look for
when buying it or is bare bones good enough?
5. Hard Drive. The website says about 2 gigabytes/hour while recording.
For some reason this seems really low to me. Is that for a smaller
resolution? So the drives are all pretty cheap, but what I'm thinking
of is that if I had a 10,000 RPM drive (กม 7,200) fast forwarding and
track marks would respond *much* faster. There is a huge price
difference though and the max capacity for a 10,000 RPM drive is only
36 megabytes. Maybe one 10,000 rpm drive for main usage and a residual
7,200 drive for spill over? I doubt I'd be recording more than 10 hours
at a time (length of two football games), even over vacations. Any
thoughts?
6. Linux. I've never done a thing in Linux but have experience in
UNIX... anyway I'm hoping to learn. Also -- Red Hat, Madrake, Debian
etc. -- which is right? MythTV seems to suggest that Red Hat has a
bunch of settings that are naturally in conflict with it that need to
be modded, yet Red Hat seems to be the most popular version. I was
gunning to install the barest of Linux OSs on this computer as I'm not
using it for anything except TiVoing, MP3s, and maybe a few games.
7. Is more than 256 RAM worth it?
8. Will I be able to record two separate channels at the same time? If
so do you think I should dual process it? What other components will be
affected?
This is so much more expensive than buying a TiVo but it's going to be
a lot more fun!
Thanks!
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