[mythtv-users] Shopping for an HDTV for Myth

[David George]

On 3/14/2005 12:27 PM, Jim Oltman wrote:

>How much did this system set you back, excluding the LED board.
>
Not including the LED board, about $600.  I could have cut corners a 
little.  I could have probably used a 512MB flash instead of 1GB (about 
$40 cheaper at the time).  Also the case is fairly expensive at $85 
(directron.com now has them for $72).  The motherboard is the single 
most expensive part at $285.  The slot load slim DVD isn't cheap either 
($75 but newegg no longer sells them).  I could find plenty of slim DVD, 
but I didn't want the laptop type for the frontend.  Too worried about 
someone pushing to hard clicking the DVD onto that center rim.

You can have small, quiet, inexpensive.  Pick any two :-)  Just kidding, 
small and inexpensive are mutually exclusive.  You are probably 
wondering now why I would spend so much on a seemingly underpowered 
system.  First, with HDTV, a fairly beefy CPU is loud and I would need a 
VGA to component video converter ($110).  I have about $900 in my 
current frontend (P4 2.8, 512MB, FX5200 ultra, 9A60, ...).  Second and 
more important, power (electrical that is).  My old power-hungry beast 
of a frontend is loud and expensive to operate.  I know it isn't a 
direct comparison because you can do other things with the higher speed 
Intel (or AMD) frontend when you don't need the CPU grunt to handle 
playing back HDTV, but I only use the frontend for a frontend so it was 
worth it to me.  $285 on the Commell side vs. about $420 ($250+$60+$110) 
on the Intel side to playback an HDTV stream (motherboard and video 
only).  Besides, I enjoy working on this kind of stuff and wanted to see 
if I could make an appliance type MythTV frontend.  :-)

>  How
>did you get the IR sensor working off the motherboard?  Do you have
>link for that?
>  
>
Haven't gotten that far yet.  Still working on the video.  The 
motherboard has an IR receiver and I am planning on using lirc_sir 
(hopefully).

-- 
David

HDTV capable frontend I am working on (now with a picture)
  http://mythhd.info