[mythtv-users] Getting ready to setup a new system

[Joseph A. Caputo]

Dave Anderson wrote:

> Hello all,
> I'm getting ready to setup a new MythTV system for the first time and 
> wanted opinions on my hardware.
> 
> I have an old Dell XPS PIII/650 MHz with 128 Meg Ram. I will up the ram 
> to 265 Meg.
> I'll be using the original 20 Gig HDD and an additional 180 Gig HDD.
> I have a Hauppauge PVR-350 coming.
> I have a PNY nVidia GeForce4 5600 Ultra coming.
> Sound card is Yamaha based.
> I also have a Pinnacle PCTV Pro I was thinking of adding in as a second 
> tuner.
> 
> I'm hoping the high end tuner and video will compensate for the lack of 
> CPU. What do you all think? Will it work? I don't really care if I can't 
> pause live tv, but it would be nice if I can. Maybe down the road I can 
> get a faster cpu and use it as a backend for a few frontends located in 
> the family room and bedrooms.
> 
> Oh yeah, I plan to use RedHat 9.

Mostly everything looks good here, just a couple of points:

- I don't think a PIII-650 will handle an analog tuner like your 
Pinnacle card (...you *might* get away with 320x240 low-quality RTjpeg, 
I suppose, but LiveTV won't be possible through that card).  Save the 
analog card for a faster machine.

Now, if you take the Pinnacle card out of the loop, you're left with the 
PVR-350 (a GREAT card!).  With this, you can ditch the sound card and 
the GeForce card; you can get both sound & video out of the PVR-350. 
Actually the PVR-350 TV-out is superior to any video card, it's 
reported.  As for the sound, I think you might have sync issues if you 
use the PVR-350's TV-out but not the sound, so why bother with the sound 
card?  Save the GeForce, Yamaha & Pinnacle cards and use them to build a 
second backend or frontend/backend when you get a faster machine.

That's my USD$0.02.

-JAC