[mythtv-users] Soon to be new user's planned setup

[Stephen Tait]

>
>I already have a headless Linux server in the basement. It is a cel800
>and very idle, since it only serves my SliMP3 (Fantastic thing by the
>way). I plan to fit it with extra ram and hd and 2 pvr250
>(hw-encoding) in order to watch one thing and record another.

Very nice. But if both cards are going to be active at the same time, make 
sure your motherboard & HD's can handle it. The PVR's generate huge amounts 
of DMA/disc traffic which can cause problems with slow HD's or buggy 
chipsets (like the VIA KT266 and 133 IIRC).


>I now want a frontend in the livingroom by the tv. It should be small,
>as quiet as possible. It will only be used for myth.

Only for MythTV, or for MythMusic, DVD, video and all the rest of it?

As quiet as possible = passively cooled low power chips and network boot.

>Since I don't
>have any experience at all yet with mythTV, i am not totally sure how
>everything works, or what is needed. But i figure some newer small
>intel processor (newer and smaller for low powerconsumption

*laughs* Newer intel chips run hotter than anything else out there, whilst 
other ones will do the job just fine. Currently the best performing/coolest 
running chips are the Opteron/Athlon64.  (yes, I am a self confessed AMD 
fanboy). The coolest running chips you'll find are the Cyrix/C3 chips in 
the VIA boards. If you can get hold of a Pentium M or an Athlon mobile 
you'll get very good performance and lower power consumption.

>, intel for
>compability)

*raises eyebrows*

Seriously, any processor will do, the whole compatability thing is just 
ridiculousness spouted by Toms Hardware. If you're just going to be 
watching TV on this thing, then one of the EPIA boards from VIA sounds like 
it would do admirably; low power CPU, built in MPEG2 decoding through 
either a proprietary driver or an open source one. Support network boot and 
just about anything else, all fitting inside a tiny case with a 200W or 
less PSU. Only the newer ones have the horsepower

>. Perhaps onboard sound and perhaps onboard video.

Onboard stuff in the VIA's is usually passable, check out the forums at 
www.viaarena.com

>Perhaps
>Usb-storage instead of hd for lower noise).

Hard drives make noise and heat however they're connected. If you have the 
opportunity to chuck your system hard drive down in the cellar, do so. 
Don't use flash storage if you can avoid it, it's very expensive and has a 
limited lifespan (circa 100000 writes on a sector) before it dies on it's 
arse, unless you patch your kernel with a filesystem that is very 
conservative about writes (I believe they exist for emdedded linux systems).

>I don't mind paying a
>small premium to get a prebuild box that fits the description, but am
>also willing to build it myself.

Off the top of my head, www.kustompcs.co.uk, www.mini-itx.com and 
www.ultim8pc.co.uk both specialise in HTPC equipment. UK based, obviously, 
but they have a very good selection of hardware, reviews and articles which 
should give you a good guide as to what's out there.


>Front and back connected with ordinary 100mb ethernet.

MIlli-bit?

;^)

This should be fine - streaming MPEG2 streams to the frontend shouldn't use 
up more than about 14Mb/s. Obviously, if you decide to add ten frontends 
(or do anything else network intensive), you'll need gig eth.



>BTW: Does the frontend have the nice ui from the screenshots, or is it
>webbased or something?

It has the nice UI from the screenshots. Why on earth would you want to 
watch TV through a browser?!