Hey, thanks alot for your responses! As someone new to the whole MythTV thing, choosing the PVR card itself is somewhat overwhelming... A newegg.com search for "pvr" returned some PCI PVR cards ranging between $29.99-$191!
As per Dewey's suggestion, I think I will get this operational on my p2-450 & go up from there. I definitely need to prove this thing for my girlfriend... she thinks I'm nuts :) Thanks for the PCRetro link! I've never heard of that company before, what a great idea! -Pete On 6/7/05, Dewey Smolka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Your P II will probably be enough to make everything run and to prove > to yourself (or significant other) that it really does work. Once you > get going with Mythtv, though, you're going to want a more powerful > processor. > > I built my first system on an AMD K6, which worked but which was very, > very slow to respond. I ended up abandoning that machine and built a > fresh one on a P III 750. > > As long as you can offload most of the heavy processing to extra > cards, this is enough to drive a backend/frontend and deliver fast > enough response times. > > This does mean that your TV capture card has to do its processing in > hardware. The Hauppage PVR 250 is the obvious choice, particularly for > its level of support in Myth, although there are plenty of success > stories with the 150/500 (newer, lesser support than 250) and the 350 > (same as 250 but with TV-Out that has been problematic). > > I still use the remote that came with my 250, and I think the rest of > the Hauppage PVR cards come with remotes as well. > > Your graphics card should be fine as long as you avoid OpenGL and 3D > effects. If not, there's plenty of solid cards for under $50, like the > the nvidia fx5200. > > The problem you'll run into with a PII 400, besides slow menu > response, is that you'll be able to record to mpeg2 no problem, but > operations like commercial flagging and transcoding will take forever. > Again it's probably enough to get an idea of what MythTV is capable > of, but surely you will want something a bit stronger later. > Fortunately, the hardware is very cheap and getting cheaper -- check > out pcretro.com for great deals on older used/refurbished/unsold > hardware. > > If nothing else, your PII has plenty of power to be a file server > later on, particularly after you fill up your 240 GB (which will > happen far sooner than you think). > > If you haven't already, have a look at knoppmyth > (http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html). It is a complete MythTV > installation built on Debian unstable. Other than that, I can't give > you any Debian-specific information, but others on this list and at > the Knoppmyth forum can. > > Good luck, > _______________________________________________ > mythtv-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users > _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
