[mythtv-users] Ultimate affordable VMWARE 4.0/MythTV box suggestions?

[Jarod C. Wilson]

On Friday, Sep 26, 2003, at 08:51 US/Pacific, Wayne Veilleux wrote:

> I'm currently using VMware 3.1.1 everyday on Linux running mostly 
> Microsoft OS and sometimes Linux and FreeBSD. I did not look for new 
> feature on VMware 4.0 but I'm pretty sure it won't see any TV tuner 
> card.

I'm running VMware 4.0. Virtual machines will definitely NOT see the 
tuner card.

> And, if that would be possible, you would need a "monster power pc" to 
> have enough power to run that kind of multimedia application.

Yes.

> VMware is very good for desktop apps like MS-Office but when you try 
> to run any multimedia apps (even like an mp3 player) the performance 
> is very bad.

I run it on a dual Athlon MP 2000. Runs quite well for most stuff, but 
no, not exactly ideal for multimedia. The big issue here is that you 
don't have direct access to the video card or sound card and their 
drivers, everything has to pipe through virtual drivers. While there is 
a bit of acceleration in the VMware virtual video drivers, it is pretty 
basic and low-end, a far cry from running native video drivers directly 
on hardware.

> If it is a $ concern, I suggest to buy a used Athlon XP.

Copy that.

> Romel Llarena wrote:
>> Getting ready to attempt another Myth install. This
>> time I would like to try to run it on VMWARE 4.0 for
>> linux. Before I make the investment I was hoping to
>> query the linux pros out there (my experience is
>> mostly with NT and 0 experience with VMWARE).
>> Space and power plugs prevent me from going with
>> multiple boxes, so I would like to build a box that
>> can host multiple Linux and NT servers. From my
>> research VMWARE seems to be the best choice. I decided
>> to use Linux (either Red Hat or Suse) as the host OS
>> for vmware as my impression is it has less overhead
>> than Windows XP.

If you're using Linux as the host OS, why not just install MythTV 
there? That would probably be your best bet...

Oh, and I've run VMware 4.0 on both Red Hat Linux 9 and SuSE Linux 8.2 
Pro (both on my dual Athlon). It runs far better on Red Hat. I believe 
MythTV is also far easier to set up on Red Hat than SuSE.

>> My questions:
>> 1. Does MythTV even work with VMWARE 4.0? An intial
>> search lends me to think that the answer is "Yes".

I haven't actually tried it, but my initial response is "absolutely 
not" if you want to have a video capture card, since virtual machines 
have no direct access to hardware.

>> 2. Can I run the configuration on an Intel box with a
>> PVR-150 card?

I'm not familiar with the PVR-150. Do you mean 250 or 350 perhaps, or 
is that a card I haven't heard of?

>> 3. If you had a budget of $500 for the motherboard,
>> processor, videocard, sound card, and RAM, what would
>> you buy that's most stable and linux friendly?

Depends on exactly what you want to do about MythTV & VMware, what you 
want to connect the computer to (TV or monitor, plain speakers or DD5.1 
amp), etc.

Look at http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/ for hardware suggestions.

--Jarod

-- 
Jarod C. Wilson, RHCE

Got a question? Read this first...
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

MythTV, Red Hat Linux 9 & ATrpms documentation:
http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-page.php?pageName=rh9pvr250