[mythtv-users] New System Hardware Recommendations

[Dewey Smolka]

Easy, tiger. Let's all try to be civil here, OK? 

The more specific you make your question, the easier it is for people
to help you; the easier it is, the more people will be willing to help
you.

You're right, this is a very active list, and overall, a very friendly
one. But people here do get rather snipey at times, particularly when
asked questions that lack the proper information.

If someone, for example, writes the list saying, "My video card
doesn't work. How do I fix it?", there's not much anyone can do.

If the same person instead writes, "I'm having trouble getting the
TV-out on my nVidia GeForce 4 to overscan to an NTSC TV. I'm running
0.17 on FC3. I've tried using xvidtune and nvtv but I can't seem to
adjust the picture size, only attributes like color, brightness, etc.
Any suggestions?" they are much more likely to get some help.

The hardware possibilities for MythTV are quite extensive. For someone
to recommend hardware for you, it would help to know things like:
* Are you planning to display to a monitor or TV
* Is the system primarily for recording TV? watching live TV?
archiving videos? playing music?
* Are you looking for a combined frontend/backend or a backend with
separate frontends?
* How much of an issue is case size and appearance? Or noise?
* Do you need to have HDTV capability? 
* What's the source of your TV signals -- OTA? CATV? DirectTV? 
* How much do you want to spend?

I have experience setting up low-budget machines and can give you
plenty of suggestions on how to build a great box for under $500, but
my suggestions will not give you HDTV or surround sound.

Plenty of other people on the list could help you set up a
full-throttle system with a four-tuner backend, separate frontends via
802.11x, HDTV-out, and remote channel switching to satellite
recievers. This will cost a lot more than $500.
    
As a general suggestion, include as much information as possible in
your posts, and make sure to search the archives
(http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/) first to see if your
question has already been answered.

Once you're up and running, make sure you include in your posts what
distribution you're using, what build of MythTV, and any relevant log
output that can help people reproduce and/or diagnose the problems
you're having.

Good luck, and welcome to MythTV.

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 12:47:53 -0500, John M. Luker
<jonedangerousli at yahoo.com> wrote:
> David wrote:
> 
> > I'd recommend an iPAQ or Zaurus PDA
> > With a calendar!!
> > It'll let you plan a week or so of lurking :)
> > Then you'll get an idea about archives and searching !!
> > David
> 
> That's really helpful, David. Just think, an experienced member such as
> yourself just wasted as many resources with your dumb at ss reply as I did
> with My dumb at ss question. Way to go!
> 
> J.
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