[mythtv-users] Stability and quality questions

Tor Hovland tor at nidaros.homedns.org
Mon Jan 26 11:21:42 EST 2004


I have been following this list for a while, and I am about ready to acquire
some hardware for a dedicated living room Mythbox. Two things are vital if I
am to hand over control to a PC; stability and quality. I have a few
questions about that. Yes, I know about
http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-pvrhwdb.php, but the answers aren't easily
found there.

* Which particular chipsets, motherboards, video cards, all kinds of
hardware, really, have been found to be less than rock solid with MythTV? 

* The Hauppauge PVR-250/350 is clearly regarded as a top-notch tuner. Are
there other tuners that are equally good, for instance the cheaper Hauppauge
ones? I'm talking strictly tuner here, no video out, no hardware
encoding/decoding, etc.

* The ivtv drivers are not quite stable yet. Do the problems strictly have
to do with video out, or are there stability issues also with the tuner
part? Can a MythTV machine with a PVR-250/350 be rock solid as long as one
is not using the PVR-350 output?

* The PVR-350 is regarded to have the best tv-out quality, but as noted the
drivers are not sufficiently stable. Which other video cards have good
tv-out? It doesn't have to be as good as the PVR, but it must be quite hard
to detect that the tv signal is running via the computer. Are there even
motherboards with sufficiently good tv-out? Does the Asus Pundit have
sufficiently good onboard tv-out?

* And a somewhat off-topic question: Is the Asus Pundit really quiet, enough
to leave it always running in the living room?

Finally, if anyone is successfully running MythTV on a small form factor PC
with superb stability and excellent video and audio quality without having
to avoid certain features like the EPG, please post your hardware
configuration, or email me.

-- 
Tor



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