Have a look at a 915 chipset board.....you may find the ones with onboard broadcom(tg3)gigabit lots of usb/1394 etc....onboard ICH6 sound...alsa 1.0.8 + works with it..no midi support yet tho
I just got 1 with 2 gig of ram and a pvr 150 sub $1200 Australian dollars 350 has tv Out on it....id say pvr 150/250/500 may be better value to you as your not outputting from the backend.. VIA boards are not recommended...915 boards works fine so far...i can record 2 channels and transform also -----Original Message----- From: Ben Bargabus [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, 25 May 2005 12:48 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [mythtv-users] Newbie questions... Hi Folks, I'm brand new to the MythTV world, I've been lurking here for a day and read the HOWTO but haven't yet touched the software. I have MANY questions but I'll stick to just the few that are most pressing to me in this first post. I'd like to experiment with this in a system with separate machines for back and front ends. I'll be purchasing hardware for the backend but trying to make do with mostly spare parts on the front end. First of all I'm interested in comments any of you have regarding the hardware I'm looking at for the backend... MoBo/CPU: Chaintech SPT800 Motherboard and Intel Pentium 4 3.0Ghz Processor http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Edp No=1209284&CatId=1235 Harddrive: Seagate's Barracuda 300GB (Model: 7200.8) http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Edp No=1388892 Tuner Card: Hauppauge PVR-350 http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=473901 DVD/CD Source: NEC ND3520 16x8x16x DVD+RW, 4x DVD+R DL, 48x24x48x CD-RW http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Edp No=1337277&Sku=N27-1876 Other stuff: 1GB DDR400 RAM, Rackmount Case, LinkSys Gigabit NIC It appears I can get all that stuff for a little under $1000.00 and from what I've read it should be capable of handling the load and then some. Anyone see holes in my plan so far? A couple specific questions about my hardware... 1) that mother board uses VIA chips, I've seen warnings about their DMA, is that a problem of the past or should I go with an Intel chipset board? 2) my backend will be handling record duties for scheduled programs but won't be playing anything back directly, I kind of got the impression that the PVR-350's advantage was in decoding as well as encoding, should I save some money and go with a PVR-150 or 250? 3) is a single gigabit NIC going to handle the network traffic necessary for high quality video? What about when I expand my network to four or five front ends? I think that's enough of the questions for one email. I'll hit you guys with my front end questions once we tackle these. :) Thanks for your time, Ben.
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