Brian Wood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> says: > With some recent discussion here about CPUs and costs I wonder what > the "average" cost of a MythTV machine might be. > > I have seen some "turnkey" machines offered for what I consider to > be very high prices, even given the fact that the builders deserve a > certain profit. I do not wish to mention names, but $1500 for what > seems to be a minimal front/back-end box with 1 capture card seems > quite high to me,
Presuming you're talking about Mythic.TV's Dragon, $1450 seems to me a reasonably fair price for high-quality, well-chosen components (solid motherboard with both gigabit Ethernet and FireWire, for example) preassembled inside a nice case that fits well lookwise into a component stack. (Although I do wonder about the Nvidia 6200TC, given that by most accounts a MX5200 would deliver better performance for a lwoer price. I'm looking forward to seeing for myself when my cheap eBay-purchased PCX 5300 arrives this week; thanks, Scott, for pointing it out.) Plus custom scripts to ease the KnoppMyth installation (I'm sorry, but one of the cruelest things I can think of is to give a novice KnoppMyth and tell him it's an out-of-the-box way to turn any computer into a super-TiVo instantly, as so much online literature more or less claims. SATA drives require manual installation? Dire warnings against USB keyboards and mice? Sheesh.) onto the box. I didn't go the Dragon route, but in retrospect perhaps I should have. Here's what I've spent so far: * $800 Sony VGC-RB Pentium 4 3.0GHz (nice, understated black case with Sony logo, although minitower instead of the Dragon's stereo component-style case) * $70 Nvidia GeForce 6200TC PCI Express card * $40 Nvidia PCX 5300 PCI Express card (to replace previous) * $80 D-Link gigabit Ethernet PCI Express card * $80 URC MX-500 universal learning remote * $40 IR wireless keyboard/mouse * $160 HD5000 HDTV capture card ---------------------- * $1190 Total (to simplify matters I'm excluding sales tax from everything). The Sony computer cost $800 as part of a bundle that also included a $200 Sony flat-panel monitor and $120 Epson all-in-one printer; I'll probably end up selling the monitor, so that should reduce the $800 cost by some amount. If I ever want digital sound output I'll probably have to invest $50 in a PCI sound card to replace the onboard Intel HDA audio, and then I'll lose the ability to put a second HDTV capture card in the computer. (I guess I could go USB, but that's another box hanging off the box.) Now, it is true that with my setup I do get some things I wouldn't have had with Dragon, like the wireless keyboard/mouse and what is unquestionably the most sophisticated <$100 remote on Earth. However, the Dragon approach has certain advantages as well, like a slightly-nicer case, more slots, 512MB more memory, better sound hardware, and a second gigabit Ethernet port. Oh, and $210 in cash, but then look again at the list of things Dragon has that my setup doesn't. Besides, my time is worth money, after all. [The following is *not* addressed to Brian specifically; Brian, please don't take it as such. It's also in some ways a repeat of what I wrote in <URL:http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg53363.html>.] I know this is the cue for half the list to jump in with how they built a great MythTV box out of the parts sitting in the closet, or how they bought a $100 motherboard and a $25 case and a $100 CPU, etc., etc., and built a great MythTV box. Hey, more power to you. Guess what? Most of you aren't even trying to do HDTV, or if you are you're likely the ones trying to play 1080i with a low-end Celeron or two year-old AMD and finding that even XvMC doesn't help much. Let me repeat: My time is worth money. Or, conversely, it can be worthwhile to pay someone else to do the heavy lifting in the whole parts procurement and assembly phase of MythTV. Heaven knows this list is living proof that the software phase is difficult enough! Don't get me wrong: I appreciate the tinkering and constant striving toward perfection as much as the next guy. That's why I took the gamble of buying the PCX 5300 although honestly the HDTV picture I get right now is quite satisfactory; I really do want to go from a 95% HDTV picture to 100%. That's why I spent half of Saturday puzzling over getting the HD5000 plus indoor antenna to finally pick up a few over-the-air channels (fortunately, including the two HD network affiliates that RCN cable in San Francisco doesn't carry) after several false starts at the issue. But can I understand someone who prefers the destination to the journey, and is willing to pay a bit more to get there that much faster? Absolutely. -- Yeechang Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
