[mythtv-users] just bought an SP13000, did I make a stupid mistake?

phoner myth at onracine.com
Tue May 9 00:04:05 EDT 2006


> Kevin Slater wrote:
>> A little background - I've had a working EPIA M-9000 for a couple of
years. It's woefully behind in every way (OS, MythTV version, IVTV
driver), but the family uses it daily. (And we don't even have a
working IR remote; we use an IR keyboard.)
>>
>> So I decided after getting paid for a side admin job that it was time
to build a replacement. I just ordered an SP13000 + memory + SATA disk
+ silent power so that I could build a new MythTV and swap it in. Was
my choice of the SP13000 ill-advised?
>>
>> I'm not doing HD, and I'll probably use the S-Video out like I do
currently with the M9k board. I'm not afraid of patching and building
if so required, but I was hoping with the new Unichrome stuff that I'll
get much better output than what I currently get with my ancient via
drivers in an old RH kernel.
>>
>
> Not a mistake as far as I'm concerned.
> You do need the correct hardware:
> 1)	A PVR-type card or equivalent, so that the mpeg compression is done
in hardware. The motherboard has hardware decompression to deal with
playing the streams.
> 2)	It does need xvmc set up.
> 3)	It has a single PCI slot, so you may need the original VIA 2 slot PCI
riser card if you want 2 different tuner cards. Of course the PVR500 is
a good choice since it gives 2 tuners in one slot. The Via riser does
the electrical connections on-board and does not require a daughtercard
stuffed into a pci slot as most do.
>
> I'm running the SP13000 and enjoying it greatly. Now. It wasn't so great
late last summer, but now it is a breeze. Put Fedora Core 5 on it and
the kernel modules are up to date and stable. Blacklist the cx8800
module if you have an HD3000 card. Install ivtv if you have a PVR type
card. Install the xorg via driver from the rpm at kelkoo.net/epia/FC5
and you are xvmc ready with a few edits to the xorg.conf file. Done.
>
> And it WILL record from 3 tuners at once AND play back a video all at
the same time.
>
> Geoff
>
>
>
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>

I've had a frontend/backend + PVR-250 working on a SP13000 for some time.
One thing to note, cpu throttling is broken in via hardware, it's use will
cause lockups during DMA transfers. This board also does not do fan speed
throttling. I had wanted to use both features to cool/silent my mythbox,
but it's not meant to be.

-phoner





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