[mythtv-users] Quick opinions

[Jim Stichnoth]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 10:03 AM, Matthew Keefe
<learningtehlinux at gmail.com> wrote:
> Having picked a smaller htpc like case, I am somewhat concerned about
> the heat output.  If the 5050e can handle recording an hd stream while
> displaying hd livetv then it sounds like a winner.  Of course, if I
> can find a relatively quiet fan to cool the 7750 and that will fit the
> slim case, two thumbs up.

My master BE/FE has the 45W 4450e, two 1TB hard drives, and a PVR-150,
also fed by 2 HDHRs.  It can display HD content while recording 4 HDHR
streams, 1 PVR-150 stream, and doing 2 jobs (commflag or transcode).
That hardware, plus an nVidia graphics card, is crowded inside a
micro-ATX low-profile case.  My only problem was to manage the I/O
bandwidth (use storage groups on 2 drives, let mythfilldatabase run
only in the wee hours, enable ext3 slow deletes, be careful about
using mythweb when lots of recordings are going on).  Processing power
and heat are not an issue.  Commflagging happens faster than realtime.
 Transcoding the PVR-150 recordings to MPEG4 is slightly slower than
realtime, about 24 fps.  However, I can't display any of those HD-PVR
sample videos without stuttering, even the 7Mb/s one.  5Mb/s is about
the limit without VDPAU.

At some point I decided I wanted faster commflagging so I got a 95W
quad-core 9600 processor.  Things were indeed faster, but with the
stock cooler it sounded like a vacuum cleaner and the WAF dropped off
a lot.  I switched back to the 4450e and then enabled mythjobqueue on
the FE machines and everything was great.

So the bottom line is that any of your hardware options will almost
certainly be more than enough for your needs.

Jim