Unfortunately I was seduced by the succubus known as "the Low Price" and bought some ATI Theatre 550 cards for my TIVO replacement machine. Previous to this, I had 2 cheapo (as in free) tuner cards and had been testing MythTV. After a couple of days of testing, I forgot about it as I waited for my new cards to arrive. During that time, MythTV automagically recorded a whole slew of programs that it thought I might like. It ended up that it completely filled the hard drive...but it was still running without a glitch.
Fast forward a week or so and I've found out that ATI has released a linux driver for the 550 chipset so it's back to winxp. Format drive, install xp, install video, sound, capture card drivers, backup to my network using the awesome PING software. Install first PVR software, picture will freeze up about 1 hour into watching something. The capture card is still capturing to the hard drive, but the graphics are just frozen requiring you to stop the software and restart it. Reload image from network using the awesome PING software. Use 2nd PVR software (this one is free). Works all right, but doesn't automatically start capturing when you change channels and doesn't seem to work with the two tuners to it's full potential (the 2nd tuner seems to be just a backup for when the 1st is recording). Oh, and when you do start the capture, 50% the time the capture plugin crashes and requires a software restart. Reload image from network using the awesome PING software. Use 3rd PVR software. This one isn't quite as nice graphically as the first, but it doesn't seem to freeze the graphics...ok, this may be good. Ooops spoke to soon. For some reason, this one doesn't like to go throughout the night without crashing......of course it might make it through some nights, but friggin windows keeps telling me "Your computer was updated and required a reboot". Moral of the story. I don't think windows is the best platform for a media center. Among the problems above, IO seems to be a lot more jerky on windows than Linux. If I start two recordings at the same time on Windows, the video will stutter for the first couple of seconds. On Linux this didn't seem to be the same. I'm still debating getting me a different set of capture cards. zB -- "In my head there is a mirror When I've been bad, I've been wrong Food for the saints that are quick to judge me Hope for a Badman This is the Badman's Song" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Macromedia ColdFusion MX7 Upgrade to MX7 & experience time-saving features, more productivity. http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion?sdid=RVJW Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:232365 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
