[mythtv-users] Initial foray into Mythtv

[Matthew Keefe]

On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:

> On Sunday 10 May 2009 11:45:01 Matthew Keefe wrote:
>
> >
> > I hope to capture mostly SD content I believe, though the ability to
> > capture HD would not be frowned upon :)
>
> Capturing already digitized material requires little CPU, just disk I/O.
> The
> hardware you describe should be able to play back SD, but probably NOT HD.
> You might even need XvMC for SD playback, a 1.8 Ghz. single-core CPU is
> pretty slow by modern standards.


I have a 400GB Seagate coming in the mail.  Part of the SSD thing was to
free up the drive I'm using now for storage as well.


> So that hardware would certainly work as a B/E, probably not as a F/E if
> you
> want to watch HD. I don't think you can get a VDPAU-capable graphics card
> with an AGP interface.
>
> The pre-built distros are nice to get started with. Even if you plan to
> compile yourself eventually, it gets you familiar with how a Myth system
> works, how to set it up etc. As to which one to use, you probably want one
> that's based on whatever Linux distro you are already famliar with
> (MythDora
> is FC-based, Mythbuntu is, obviously, Ubuntu-based).
>
> You will need some significant capacity to store recordings, an SSD with
> sufficient capacity would be prohibitively expensive, and the SSDs are not
> faster than regular HDDs. You do want to try and have your MySQL database
> on
> a separate spindle from your recordings.
>

Putting the OS on the SSD would separate the database yes?  I'm assure you,
as of this moment I know this | | much about MySQL databases :)  Really all
I was planning to use the SSD for is to house the OS stuff so that recorded
tv and other media could be stored separately.


>
> The Rambus RAM is certainly expensive, you may eventually want to replace
> the
> hardware, but it will certainly work as a backend, if you don't need really
> fast transcodes or commflagging. The real question with a B/E is disk IO
> capability. You can, of course, go with RAID0 to increase disk performance.
>
> RDRAM also runs hot and draws a lot of current, and I think you are limited
> to
> 256 or 512 sticks, nothing bigger.
>

You are correct about the size limitations on RDRAM.  I could maybe move up
to 1gig without giving my wallet a major infarct, but beyond that it becomes
a little silly to consider as I feel like I will be replacing the hardware a
year-ish down the road...maybe sooner depending on various variables.  What
I don't know is whether such an upgrade will affect performance in a way to
make it worthwhile.


>
> Have fun.


Thanks!


>
>
> --
> beww
> beww at beww.org
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>
-- 


,./`*`~Matthew~`*`\.,
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