[mythtv-users] Mythfrontend quiet machine alternative

Vince Busam vince at busam.com
Wed Dec 3 13:37:37 EST 2003


Being concerned about noise and electricity usage, I decided I wanted one box
for both mythfrontend and mythbackend (and my web server, firewall, mail server,
etc.).  My problem was the computer room is almost 75' away from my TV.

My solution was to run 75' cables between the computer and the TV.  Personally,
I don't notice any quality problems, although I'm pretty sure that there must be
some degradation.

I purchased two adapters (model SVSA-RJ45) which are used to send both S-Video
and two channel Audio over Cat 5 wiring (standard Ethernet cable).  One adapter
is at the PC and one at the TV.  I have a 75' Cat 5e Ethernet cable between
them.  The adapters are not cheap ($60 each at svideo dot com) but I couldn't
find a long S-Video cable so I decided to go with them.

For the IR from the PVR-250, I used some old cable I had lying around.  Only 3
wires were needed to extend the IR.  I bought the male and female connectors at
Radio Shack to make an extension cable.  The wire I used was two lengths of
RG-58.  I used the two center wires for the two signals lines and the two
shields for ground.  This cable is also 75'.

My only real problem is that when myth hangs, I have to go to the computer to
fix the problem since I don't have a keyboard at the TV.  And when I leave the
computer, I have to switch to the VT on which mythfrontend is running since I
haven't yet solved the problem of having X running and not turning off the
display when I ctrl-alt-Fx to some other tty or VT.

FYI my current setup is:
Athlon 2200+ CPU
Asus A7V8X-x MB (VIA KT400 & VT8235 chipsets, I use on-board audio)
Asus AGP Magic/T GeForce 4 MX440 8x 64MB DDR video card (for CRT)
Antec Plus1080AMG Tower (430 watts, overkill but a nice case for a server)
512MB DDR SDRAM (overkill but relatively cheap)
PNY GeForce4 MX420 64MB PCI TV out video card (for TV, hoping to solve
ctrl-alt-Fx problem)
Lots of hard disk space (using LVM for /var/video)
PVR-250 (M179 on order, AverMedia removed from system)




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