[mythtv-users] warnings and recommendations on my new mythtv box

Taco Mel taco_mel at yahoo.com
Mon Sep 17 14:39:51 UTC 2007


Here is some feedback regarding your system:

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500 - I like this card.  Newegg
was unable to guarantee me that they would send me the
"type A" tuners (Philips) which are reputed to be
vastly superior to the "type B" tuners (Samsung).  I
ended up getting my card off eBay ("new") because the
seller there could guarantee type A tuners.

SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ - I have purchased
5 of these drives over the last year for MythTV and
non-MythTV applications.  One came DOA (immediately
failed SMART on my 3ware controller) and one died
after about a month (clicking, timing out IO,
reporting "cable failure" with multiple cables).  I
RMA'd the DOA one through Newegg and got a
replacement.  The one that died later was about 3
months old and is currently shipping to Samsung for
RMA.  So when you get this please make sure that you
have SMART monitoring configured on your system and
that you turn it on right away in case you get a DOA
drive.  While these drives were cheap and highly rated
at Newegg, the 33% failure rate I have encountered is
too high for my comfort and I am switching to a
different brand.

This also points out that you might want RAID if you
don't want to lose your recordings; fortunately mine
was set up this way and my recordings survived.


       
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