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

[Travis Tabbal]

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 6:11 PM, Jeff Jensen <jjensen at apache.org> wrote:

> Thank you for the replies!
>
> The Revo is interesting solution.  In my exploring, I also found the Fit
> PC:
>  http://www.fit-pc.com
> Seems about the same specs.  Might save her a little on the electricity
> bill? ;-)  Anyone familiar with the Fit?
> They both have only a 160G drive.  Might be enough (I kind of doubt it) if
> she doesn't accumulate shows.  Otherwise, as suggested, will need a USB
> drive or NAS.
>
> I have an HDHR, and think I'll use same for her.  I think it's a great
> product, silently working.  And easy 2 tuners.  Any negatives with that vs
> the USB stick originally suggested?
>


The Fit isn't going to work for HD. The only Atom based systems you should
look at are the NVidia ION chipsets as they can use VDPAU to play videos
back so you don't need the CPU to do any decoding.

With your needs, I would build my own system. The pre-builds are going to be
smaller, but they will also only use laptop HDs and likely only have space
for one of them. For a combined system, I would use a small cheap HD (or
even CF) for the OS and put the recordings on a 3.5" 1TB or so drive. That
way, everything except the HDHR can be in one box as well. Just set the HDHR
on top of it and you're good to go. The USB stick doesn't need the extra
box, but you need an IR receiver as well, the HDHR has one. Which is better
really depends on preference, IMO. There are some rather small micro-ATX
cases that don't have a 5.25" bay, no need for an optical drive. My 2 FEs
have them and after the install I don't think I've ever used them. My
smaller FE case is about the size of a TiVo box, just to give you and idea.
It would fit in an AV stack just fine.

If you're going to do a NAS based setup, do NOT rely on WiFi. Pull a cable.
Even if it works now, if a neighbor sets up a network or they get a cordless
phone on the 2.4Ghz band, your WiFi won't cut it for HD. Particularly for 2
channels of HD. For my parents, I would avoid networking where possible and
try to keep most of the system and storage in one box.

IMO, the Revo and such are nice little boxes for an FE, but the internal
drive is too small and slow to be used for recordings. It could probably
keep up if you were doing all sequential writes, but you're not. The seek
time will kill you. Personally, I'd remove the HDD, add RAM, and netboot
them. But I already have a netboot server running for my 2 FEs, so adding
one more is really no effort.
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