[mythtv-users] daft newbie questions :-)

Robert Kulagowski rkulagowski at thrupoint.net
Fri Mar 28 14:37:20 UTC 2003


 
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> 1) (I don't know if I dare ask this....) - which is the 
> 'best' flavour of 
> Linux to use for this - the PC in question isn't going to be used
> for  anything else except mythtv. Is there any real difference 
> between them for 
> this? (I have a copy of RedHat sitting around, but I can use 
> something else 
> if it's better/easier)

That's a matter of personal preference.  Mandrake and Redhat have the
most documentation in the HOWTO, debian and Red Hat have pre-made
RPMs for MythTV.  Other than that, they're just about all the same. 
Personally, I'm a Mandrake fan, but it doesn't really matter.

> Are any TV cards better than any others?

There are some poor tuner designs that cause the video to not be as
clear as they could be.  Problem is that vendors will come out with
radically different designs, all under the same name, so there's no
way to know ahead of time.

For now, you're going to want to ensure that your card has a BT8x8
chip on it, not a CX23881, since there's no drivers for the latter.

Finally, the HOWTO has a list of cards that support btaudio.  From
the system specs below, you either need to run btaudio, or get
another sound card.

> 3) Does RAM make any difference to MythTV (would 1GB be 
> better than 256M or 
> 512M?) given that the PC is ONLY going to be used for MythTV.

256M is more than enough for a dedicated Myth box.

> Any problems with the following PC spec?
> - AMD Athlon XP 2800+
> - Asus A7V8X/LAN motherboard (built in audio)
Check the archives for issues with nForce audio chipsets.

> - 512MB DDR RAM
> - 120GB UDMA-100 drive
> - IDE DVD-ROM drive

> - ATI 9000 card with TV-Out
Check the archive about issues with ATI cards and X drivers.

> - Hauppauge WinTV Theater (x 2?)
Should support btaudio.

> - PC BlastIR

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