[mythtv-users] My mom wants a DVR...

[Christopher X. Candreva]

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010, Jeff Jensen wrote:

> My mother has asked me to get her a DVR for her nice 42" HDTV.  It needs to
> have a digital tuner (US OTA) and prefer HDD.  Naturally, I'd like to use
> Myth.  However, she doesn't have a "convenient" setup for it (TV is in a
> "loft" area, no computer around).  Additionally, I'm afraid of time
> requirement to support a second Myth system (I have difficulty just making
> time to upgrade mine!).  So I've been looking into other stand-alone ideas
> and traditional DVRs.

I built my parents a Myth system for Christmas '08, and so far no problems. 
Now granted they are only 15 minutes away, my parents are both somewhat 
technical -- oh yeah, and my mom started out as a Cobol programmer in the 
1960's and uses Linux on the desktop exclusively. :-)  But seriously, 
especially for OTA only I would have no problem recomending Myth to set up 
for parents. At least you can log into it remotely, which you can't with a 
Tivo.

I built a machine with an ASUS M3N78-VM motherboard & Athlon 64 X2 2.6ghz 
CPU, which plays HD fine without VDPAU. It's a combined frontend/backend in 
an IN WIN  IW-BT566T.300BL case . I don't see it listed at Newegg any more 
but it's still available elsewhere. This case fits in the tv stand and holds 
2 1.5tb internal drives. The boot drive also has videos, second drive is 
recordings only. I also ripped their DVD collection to the drive, so as an 
added bonus they got all the DVDs out of the living room.

For a tuner I used an HD-Homerun, which sits in the basement and talks to 
the Myth machine over the ethernet.

Yes it has fans, but they are barely audible, especially to my parents, and 
especially at the volume they keep the TV anyway. :-)


==========================================================
Chris Candreva  -- chris at westnet.com -- (914) 948-3162
WestNet Internet Services of Westchester
http://www.westnet.com/