[mythtv-users] Hardware suggestions for a dedicated frontend

[Dean Wilson]

Several months ago, I successfully installed a mythTV frontend/backend
with both HD and SD capture cards -- now I'm working on a dedicated
frontend for another room.

I thought that I could use an old Athlon 1800 that I had lying around
- which works well for SD, but not for HD.  (Unfortunately, while the
TV in the other room isn't HD, I would still like to be able to watch
the shows I've recorded in HD, so I still have to be able to decode
the HD stream.)  I have an Nvidia 5200FX,  and I tried enabling XvMC -
but for some reason, playback only works for up to a minute or so
before the entire system freezes, and has to be rebooted.  I've tried
quite a few solutions -- newer/older Nvidia drivers, tweaking NFS,
rpm/source alsa drivers, all without success.  Finally I'm considering
upgrading the hardware so that I can decode the stream without XvMC.

So (unless someone has a suggestion to fix my current problem) my
question is this: given my current system, would it be better for me
to get a cheap motherboard with a celeron processor (Intel supposedly
decodes video better than AMD), or just to upgrade my Athlon?  (And if
I upgrade the Athlon, how high should I go for decoding a single HD
stream?)

Thanks for your help,
~Dean