[mythtv-users] Building a Simple, Barebones, Minimalist, Cheap Backend

[Mike Perkins]

Brian Wood wrote:
> Ivan Kowalenko wrote:
>> Hey all. It seems my repurposed HP Pavilion is giving me some trouble,  
>> and this might just be the excuse I need for a new back end system.  
>> I'm looking at making something smallish (mini-tower or smaller,  
>> hopefully), low powered (Geode or Atom might be cool), and cheap (Sub- 
>> $250, circa-$100 hopefully). I've already got a capture card  
>> (PVR-150), and a pair of hard disks (one 6GB drive for the OS, one 250  
>> GB drive for recordings, both PATA), and I'm not looking for any real  
>> playback capabilities (I use my laptop as an incidental front-end as  
>> I'm the only user of the system). Any advice on where to find  
>> hardware? I've looked around at NewEgg and TigerDirect, so far I've  
>> got an OK system put together for about $125, but it's using a Via C3,  
>> and I have no idea what those things are like. Any advice?
> 
> The problem with a VIA CPU is that they are most often attached to
> motherboards that use VIA chipsets, and those have been problematical
> with MythTV systems. DMA problems mostly.
> 
> I think you will find that 250GB is pretty small for recording storage,
> I'm finding 1TB to be tight, and that's only for SD. 500GB and 750GB
> drives are getting quite cheap (I saw a 500 for $65 yesterday).
> 
> The most important thing for a backend is I/O, not CPU, unless you need
> fast commflagging or transcoding.
> 
Most modern VIA mini-ITX boards are OK if you are only looking at SD playback. I 
am running one as a frontend myself with minimyth. I would have thought that for 
a backend-only machine and MPEG-2 coming in a via board would be OK, provided 
you get a C7 processor, not a C3. C3's don't have the grunt to do much 
time-sensitive processing at all and you are also limited in RAM. Note they only 
have one PCI slot so you will be restricted to just your single PVR-250 card, 
unless you top-up with USB tuners.

Also, check whether your chosen board has SATA or PATA connectors. Most large 
disks available now will be SATA, should you decide to take Brian's advice.

-- 

Mike Perkins