[mythtv-users] Newb Question

[Dewey Smolka]

On 9/12/06, Andrew Davis <andrew at nccomp.com> wrote:
> You'd be surprised, but here's the breakdown (sans pricing since I'm not
> allowed to share my vendors pricing publically):
>
> Silverstone Aluminum case LC17

Attractive, but as with all HTPC-style cases, heat will be an issue,
particularly considering all the gear you're talking about putting
into it.

> Antec 550W NEO Low noise HE P/S

Probably not overkill for all you're talking about running, but again,
heat wlll be an issue. This much power would be overkill in a more
reasonable design.

> Motherboard (955X7AA-8EKRS2 w/ 8 port SATAII RAID5/6 option)
> Intel DualCore 3.2Ghz (BX80553940T)

Certainly overkill for Myth, but should make transcode jobs fly by.
But to put this in perspective, I use a P4 2.5 GHz, and it manages com
flagging in real time and auto-transcode in about 40 min for a 1-hour
show.

> Upgraded Silverstone heatsink/fan (Nitrogon NT06)
> 4Gb Corsair DDR2 PC5400 memory (4x1GB)

Definitely overkill. Anything more than 512 MB is icing as far as Myth
is concerned. You may notice a performance boost but I really doubt
it.

> Memory heatsink/fins
> 3x500 SATAII WD 16Mb cache HD w/ 3 year warranty
> Plextor 16x (every format but HD/BR) SATA DVD drive

Again, running four drives in this case will generate a lot of heat.
Are you really sure you need this much storage as you're starting out?
Keep in mind that SD records at around 2.2 GB per hour and compresses
down (with good quality) to around 750 MB per hour.

I would seriously think about setting up your machine with only one of
the 500 GB drives, and maybe a small (20-40 GB) IDE drive for /,
/home, and swap.

> 3.5'' USB2/FireWire400 & 800/52 type media reader, CPU + Ambient Temp reader

You will definitely need a CPU and ambient temp reader, though I'm not
sure you'll like what they tell you.

> Leadtek Winfast 128Mb DDR 16xPCI-E VGA/DVI/HDTV

Double and triple check the compatibility of this card under MythTV.
Or save yourself a lot of headaches and get an nvidia. Again, you
don't need the latest and greates. Fx5200, or 6x00 series are golden.

> Happauge WinTV PVR 500 MCE Kit (w/ remote)

Not necessarily the best if you're bringing one feed direct from cable
and another from an STB. Not sure but IIRC, you'll need the expansion
module, which will take up another card bay, if you want to use two
seaprate inputs for the PVR 500's tuners. It may be worth getting two
separate PVR 150s (although I could be wrong on this one).

> Grand total was $2500. Priced out at Newegg was $2250 + shipping...
>
> Oh yeah... and it wasn't *just* going to run MythTV, but also run
> Evolution, Firefox, etc as my normal Linux box... as well as some BB &
> Nagios monitoring. And I was considering having it store my ripped movie
> collection and making it available to my system at work (I have a 10Mb
> Cox business feed at home and three T1's trunked for 4.5Mbps at work).

This may not be what you want to hear, but you'll be much, much better
off, and save yourself a lot of headaches and likely a bit of cash, if
you go with two machines rather than one. Make one box a dedicated
Myth machine. Make another one a desktop machine. For the budget
you're talking about you could easily do two machines and not lose any
of the capabilities you're talking about.