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

Ivan Kowalenko kichigaimentat at gmail.com
Sun Sep 21 23:58:00 UTC 2008


On Sep 20, 2008, at 13.27, Mike Perkins wrote:

> 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).

Well, given that this is a quick-and-dirty replacement, I'm looking to  
reuse as many parts as possible. I've found 250 GB to be plenty for my  
use (since I don't record a ton of shows). I figure if I buy an HD  
capture card (something I'm remotely considered, actually).

>> The most important thing for a backend is I/O, not CPU, unless you  
>> need
>> fast commflagging or transcoding.

I'm actually planning to do some minimal transcoding. Pretty much all  
I'm doing is transcoding a daily showing of BBC World Service for  
playback on my iPod. But the Celeron 600 managed to do an hour of  
transcoding (Colbert and Stewart) on a daily basis for my commute when  
I worked at the airport.

> 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.

That's a good warning, because the board I've got is a C3, and I've  
got a PVR-150 (early version of the PVR-250).

> 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.

Well, that's a pretty obvious one. I have done this before. ;)

Any advice on where to buy these parts, or any specific pieces of  
hardware people have had experiences with (Love it/Hate it/Kill it  
with fire)? Because my biggest problem is trying to find places that  
sell these parts (NewEgg for example only has Via C3s as far as I can  
tell).


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