Maybe I'll address everything out of order? I guess my original short and to the point email left too much unanswered and the impression I didn't know what I was doing.
> I suggest you go through the threads on this list dealing with > hardware, particularly the pieces you're looking at, and have a think > about what you want your box to do. Then maybe folks can help you a > bit more. Been doing that for a while now. That's how I came up with this config. > What's your goal? > > Before starting with an arbitrary price, you need to figure out what > you want your system to do, and where you will be expanding it. > I actually had this in an original draft of my email, but I was having subscription problems and rewrote the thing from scratch, so I didn't end up saying. Sorry for that. My goal is to use all current plugins of MythTV except MythPhone, with MythDVD on hold, beating the price of an 80-hour TiVo with lifetime subscription (which I asssumed to be 600 dollar operating budget). Therefore I should say my goal is a TiVo alternative. My only other initial specification was to have 2 tuners. Reason for putting MythDVD on hold is because ultimate goal with MythDVD is to burn DVD's too. I already have a DVD-burner in my laptop and a DVD-player with my XBOX, so I can get by for now without that. But maybe if I scrap the PVR-350 for a cheaper card I can afford to still do DVD burning within my constraints. That's something to consider. Then again, putting in DVD capabalities is replacing a DVD player to me, not a TiVo, so not to have this means I'm still acheiving my goal of just replacing an 80 hour TiVo with something better. > I'm sure you realize how powerful and flexible MythTV is, and how many > different hardware configurations are available. But unless you're > clear about what capabilities you want your box to have, there's no > advice I can give you on any of this. > > If you're trying to build a box cheaply, you're probably better off > buying a used system -- anything P3 700 and above is enough if you've > got multiple hardware cards like the PVR x50s. If you're planning on > watching live TV (but why would you be building a Mythbox then) you'll > probably want a P4 1G or better. Neither of these is more than a > couple hundred used for case, power, motherboard, CPU, and if you're > lucky, GPU, NIC, 256+ RAM, an optical drive and an HDD big enough for > your OS, Myth TV, and a nice live TV loop -- 20 G is more than enough > for this. You'll use the 250 from Newegg for storage. > I'm guessing that you're planning to run to a TV rather than a monitor > or LCD. If you're not running to TV, you don't need the PVR 350. If > you are, you'll probably get just as good a signal through the > fx5200's S-Video port (assuming it has one) with a lot less headache. > I don't use a 350, but even a cursory look at this list will tell you > that there are issues with the out on the 350. More specifically than my goal above, I'll also mention I want to transcode most of my recordings to save space (MPEG-4, or a friend of mine swears I should make everything Xvid, dunno about that) but that's why I've got so much more processing power even with hardware encoders. But then, once my recordings are no longer MPEG-2 the PVR-350 becomes less desirable. However, I know IVTV drivers are coming along well and the near future this might not be an issue? > Are you building a single system, or do you plan to expand it later? Personally one backend/frontend for now. I'll be living in a completely networked building for the next two years with 23 other people at any given time, and I hope to eventually convince some of them they should build an additional frontend for the first floor main room. I'd also convince as many they should build backend/frontends for their own bedrooms to add to the distribution. I'd probably want to avoid leeches from just building frontends for my content (with the exception of the one mainroom frontend on the first floor) > What is your display device? TV with composite, s-video, and component inputs (though it's not HD). > Are you planning to use MythMusic (in which case running sound out of > your TV speakers makes your music sound pretty crappy)? Do you want > surround sound? Yes, and surround sound would be nice on my current home audio setup (I have everything from xbox, gamecube, laptop, pc, and ipod running into it ... expect to do the same with my myth box) however I don't expect to gain much other than stereo x2. For the record, mobo I am considering in my original email has built-in sound with s/pdif out. Obviously my TV recordings would be stereo, DVD's though would be nice to have Dolby and DTS since I have the speakers for it. Though, I haven't chosen an optical drive yet for this package because I want to do that later. It's not a big deal to me, because I consider an optical drive to be replacing my DVD player, not replacing a TiVo, so spending outside the constraint on this is okay to me later. > What is your TV signal source -- analog cable, digital cable, OTA, > satellite? Will you need to deal with a separate tuner box, and if so, > how will you change the cannels (irblaster, serial, firewire, etc)? > > Do you need HD, or the ability to expand to HD on this system? I figure expanding to HD is certainly an option, but I dont have an HDTV, I don't have an HD receiver (nor digital cable). I just have basic analog cable. My friend thinks I should spend thousands of dollars to make this thing HD ready NOW. I think that's ridiculous, outside the scope of my goal especially without anything HD currently in my posession. It'd be a couple years before I get HD, and by that point I bet upgrading my Myth box to accept HD tv could mean the addition of a firewire port, or the addition of simply an HD tuner (and a larger hard drive, probably). But again, that's for later. > If you want to build a box cheaply, you could do it for $500. If you > want a lot of speed, power and capabilities, you could spend $1500. True, and I guess my goal is to spend as close to 600 as possible (with a little spill over room considering the 300 dollar TiVo would have tax). I think I addressed most of this above. _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
