[mythtv-users] Updating my machine for mythtv

[Rick Gregory]

OK, I'm about to take the plunge into mythtv land...

I've curently got a machine that's only running my mailserver and 
webserver, neither of which occupy more than 1-2% of the CPU. While I 
might build a separate system to run Mythtv on, for now I'm thinking of 
simply adding it to the box I've got after I enhance that machine a bit.

What I want out of mythtv is a system that consolidates all of my media 
on one box - DVDs (which I'd rip to the drive), music (mp3 and aac/mp4) 
and PVR features, specifically timeshifting, live TV, and what I can 
only describe as Tivo's "season pass" feature, where I can tell the 
system to record all episodes of a show unless it's already recorded them.

The system I've currently got is:

PIII/500
256M RAM
IBM 120G hard drive
Mandrake 9.1

To this I'd add a Hauppauge PVR-250 or 350, another 256M of RAM and 
perhaps a newer video card, plus I'd update to Mandrake 9.2.

Questions I have are:

 - PVR-250 or 350? The 350 seems problematic at this point and I really 
don't want to spend days getting it to work. Is there any HUGE reason to 
go with the 350 vs 250?

 - Will the CPU above be OK with one of the Hauppauge cards? I'm 
assuming that the PVR cards offload virtually all of the encode/decode 
burden, so the modest processor would be fine? Is that true?

 - Along similar lines, is there any reason to upgrade the current video 
card given that I'd be using one of the Hauppauge cards?