Joey Kelly wrote: >Y'all, > >I'm considering getting into MythTV. Rather than RTFM (boring), I'd like to >ask a few newbie questions here (way more fun): > >To what extent is HDTV supported? What cards are recommended, and can I still >record plain old NTSC with them? > > >
AFAIK, not very much HDTV support. I would check out this card http://pchdtv.com/hd_3000.html here is an article on slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/07/2232220&tid=129&tid=137&tid=1 >Will the cards work in conjunction with a digital or analog cable box, or in >place of one? > > > In conjunction with. >How fast a machine do I need? How much RAM, what kind of video card (ATI / >NVidia / onboard VIA) do I need? > > > I wouldn't go much lower than 1.5 ghz (like an amd athlon xp 1800), with 256Mb. Anything more than that isn't needed, as it will not speed anything up for you. If you're planning on using it for anything else though, I'd add more memory. My general rule is 512Mb if I'm going to be using the computer for very much at all. There are all sorts of add-ons for myth-TV like web servers, streaming video, etc. I'd go with at least 512 if you plan on anything like that, but 256 is recommended for just myth TV. I would also get as big a hard drive as I could possibly afford. I saw a 300gb 7200rpm with 8Mb cache the other day for about $150. Video card doesn't really matter - I'd go with as cheap as possible if the display is a real TV. Think about the fact that most TV's display somewhere in the range of 800X600, and they don't display very fast. I think HDTV displays somewhere about 768X1024. A hardware based encoder like a Hauppauge 250 or 350 is an absolute necessity. You could go cheap and get the Hauppauge hardware encoder like the one I've seen for about $15, but it's not very good and it doesn't come with a remote. I'm too lazy to not use a remote. But, the ads for the cheap Hauppauge win-TV encoder do say it is compatible with Linux 6.8 (whatever that means). >What are the chances of a pre-broadcast flag card being strategically >obsoleted by Big Brother later on? > > > IANAL, but I think the card I linked to above ignores the broadcast flag, and it will be grandfathered in when the new law takes effect. >How user-friendly is the front end, or are there aftermarket tools to play >recorded shows that I'd want to end up using instead of MythTV? > > > I've never actually used it, I've just RTFM and STFW. But people seem to like it. I was thinking of setting up a mythTV box, but I've not really got the time for it right now, and the guy who runs the project is thinking of buying himself a mac mini and porting myth TV to OS X. That might just be the excuse I need to convince my wife we need a mac to go along with the four other computers we have. I hope this helps. Michael Dolan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/general_brlug.net/attachments/20050213/4fd19416/attachment.htm From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Feb 13 12:18:51 2005 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Scott Harney) Date: Sun Feb 13 12:18:19 2005 Subject: [brlug-general] anyone using Vonage over Cox Cable successfully? In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Christian Tortorich wrote: > Couldn't you just release the lease on the laptop if that's the case? > > Ipconfig /release all doesn't always (usually) work. Not only does the DHCP lease have to release, but the association of customer premise MAC to a particular cable modem has to be released as well. > > If not woundt a $20 wireless B hub/switch solve this for you? > > Hugs, > Chris > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Scott Harney > Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 10:43 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [brlug-general] anyone using Vonage over Cox Cable > successfully? > > John Hebert wrote: > >>Tried that, multiple times. The VoIP box never grabbed >>an IP address, though a laptop connected to the cable >>modem would. >> >>I think the only thing I didn't try was to bring them >>both down at the same time, then bring up the cable >>modem and then the VoIP box. > > > Nah. you'd have had to call Cox and get them to manually expire the DHCP > > lease assigned to your laptop's MAC address. I stuck the Vonage ATA > behind my OBSD firewall so I didn't experience that issue (did have to > make some firewall rule changes to prioritize VOIP SIP traffic) > -- Scott Harney<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Asking the wrong questions is the leading cause of wrong answers" gpg key fingerprint=7125 0BD3 8EC4 08D7 321D CEE9 F024 7DA6 0BC7 94E5
