[mythtv-users] New system build. Looking for opinions.

Brian Bosch bdbosch at gmail.com
Thu Jun 22 04:51:05 UTC 2006


On 6/20/06, Marvin Match <match at ece.utah.edu> wrote:
> On 20 Jun 2006 at 18:49, Troy Beneke wrote:
>
> >
> > The reason I'm starting with a 120 GB HD is because I have an extra one laying around. The case
> > I want has room for 6 HDs and future expansion is assumed. I haven't watched TV/cable in 5
> > years so I'm not expecting a bum rush to fill capacity. In the future (3 years from now) I do plan on
> > getting an HD tuner of some sort. The two tuners implementation is more for me being able to
> > record something in the background while my wife watches live TV (she's a bit of a technophobe
> > and will probably take her 6 months to start trying to record something). I am planning on putting
> > in another 320-640 GB around the end of the year if everything works out as I'm expecting it to.
> >
> Yeah, I understand your thinking. I used to think this way. It's because you're not yet
> a MythTV user. Besides, how big is your CD collection? or your DVD collection?
>
> Here's what I mean:
>
> 1. I ALMOST NEVER watch anything live. You and your wife won't either. It'll take
> you little while to catch on, but once you have MythTV up and running, it just doesn't
> make sense to let the network programmers dictate your viewing habits.
>
> 2. Selecting programs to record is just so darned easy that you (and your wife) will be
> recording more programs than you ever dreamed you would, or even have time to
> watch. That's just the way it works out.
>
> 3. Most of the shows I record I have set to "record any time on this channel" So they
> just automatically get picked up. Because of this I go for weeks at a time without
> changing the programs I've selected to record. All my favourite programs just
> magically show up on my hard drive(s). No tape swapping, no setup, no nothing.
>
> and because of 1, 2 and 3:
>
> 4. There is always 100 hours or so of prime (for me) programming for me to choose
> from at any one moment.
>
> Oh BTW, I watch almost everything sans commercials and at 1.5X speed, so a 1
> hour show takes about 35 minutes to watch. Believe it or not, once you get your brain
> tuned up to the fast speed, most of the shows I record are better when played fast.
>
> If you already have the 120 Gig drive it'll (barely) allow you to get your feet wet, but
> you're going to be hooked and I guarantee you'll be looking for more hard drive
> space real soon. Over the last couple of years I've upgraded, rebuild, replaced and
> re-configured more times than I can count, and now I'm running with nearly 2.5
> terrabytes total on 2 servers.
>
> I'm a believer. I'm even putting MythTV in my sports-car (an MGB-V8) and tossing
> the stereo (that's another story). No more tapes or CD's for me!... but then, I'm a
> GEEK!

FWIW, here's a different opinion for you...

I have a 160GB drive in my combined SDTV-only FE/BE unit; 160GB was
the sweet spot in pricing vs. size when I was building my unit.  I
have a fairly standard Fedora (FC3) install, Myth from ATRPMs, a few
GB of MP3s, and the rest (about 137GB) available for video.  The only
time that space has been an issue was during the Olympics when we were
recording a ton of programming.  We haven't bothered ripping our DVD
collection because we find it easy enough to just play the disks when
we want to.

All-in-all we've been quite happy with the amount of space that we
have, and like the others we rarely watch any live TV.  (As a data
point the unit currently has ~45GB free and 37 programs of various
durations recorded using PVR x50 cards, mpeg 2 format, no
transcoding.)

Having said that, if I were to build a new system today I would likely
end up with a larger storage capacity.  Partly this is because the
sweet spot is at higher capacity drives these days and partly because
we'll likely move to HD before too long.  When we move to HD I'll
probably shoot for at least 5x what we have today...

HTH

-- Brian


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