[mythtv-users] Taking the plunge - check my proof?

[Steve Pugh]

Hello all,

First time post so let me introduce myself - my name is Steve, I live in 
Los Angeles and have been a "systems guy" type of guy in visual effects 
for a number of years.  I've built my share of Windows machines, and a 
more recently a few Linux boxes.  Most of my Linux work has been 
installing RH9 or FC2 and then running, screaming and naked, into the 
woods at the first sign of trouble.  I flipped out the first time I used 
yum to get a system up to date, it was almost a religious experience.

I have spent about a week poking around Mythtv.org and 
pvrhw.goldfish.org, and have convinced myself to build a Myth to replace 
my CD changer and ReplayTV.  My goal is to start with a frontend/backend 
unit in the living room, and at a later date add some thin frontends in 
the bedrooms.  For now, though, the "main" machine is the target.  I 
need to be able to record two shows simultaneously, I doubt that I will 
ever need to watch a different channel on live TV while doing so.  I 
want to store ~30GB of music and at least twice as much video as my 
40-hour Replay will hold.   I have a plain-Jane 27" television, and also 
a DLP projector.  Someday I see myself wanting to add HDTV into the mix, 
but I'm willing to leave that be for now.

Here's what I have, kit-bashed from a few years' worth of hoarding:  MSI 
K7D-Master dual Athlon motherboard, 1GB RAM, a PVR-250 tunercard, and a 
GeForce4 TI-4600 videocard.  I plan to add a Soundblaster (probably 
Live! but I haven't researched this angle much yet).  Hard drives, I'm 
thinking of using a couple 200GB ATA drives and Linux RAID to get 400GB 
of storage.  My DishTV receiver will require an IR Blaster (yay), and I 
hope to run my plain, boring, came-with-the-cable-modem cable into the 
second tuner to get second-tuner access to the low-end network 
channels.  Case will likely be a Silverstone.

I've got a CD-ROM containing the KnoppMyth .iso, do y'all think I'm set 
to go?  A check through the archives seems to indicate that the TI-4600 
may not be the easiest videocard to configure (especially since I'd like 
the option to run TV-Out to my tv and VGA-Out to my projector, is that 
still an issue?  I guess that's what they invented weekends and Scotch 
for....

All that to say "Wish me luck, and I will probably be asking a great 
deal of questions soon, but will do my best to search the archives first."

Cheers,
    Steve