James C. Dastrup <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> says: > I think the point here is that we know spending a months salary or > more will get us a superior system, which is obviously what you've > done, unless you have more creative ways of obtaining your hardware,
We're not very far apart; I'm a cheapskate, too, and bought said server plus enclosure on eBay. The nine 400GB drives cost twice as much as the server, actually, even though I got a fantastic price on them through an unusually-generous CompUSA sale a year ago. > but myself and others believe we are just building a fancy VCR, and > we actually enjoy pushing the envelope of our older unused hardware, > and we simply enjoy the challenge. It's fun to find out how far some > old motherboard can go and what we can do for cheap. I'm much more > impressed by someone who can get MythTV up and running on some old > junk than by those that do it the "proper" way. No disagreements here. But what about when the hardware really isn't sufficient? Sadly, a lot (OK, most) of the time, we get anguished laments on mythtv-users, punctuated with the occasional user who is positively upset because reality has cruelly shattered his hopes for a cheap TiVo. Going HDTV has further raised the bar; heck, as I've noted elsewhere, I made the mistake in thinking that a $80 6200TC would be sufficient for a 100%-perfect HDTV image on my 37" 1080p panel (which I paid $1460 for through careful vendor selection and some opportune griping to the right person when it bungled the delivery) instead of the 97% perfect I'm getting now. I'm not going to spring for a $120 6600GT because the 97% is good enough for now, but were I to do it again I'd have paid the extra money, yes (or, if also feasible, spent $30 *less* for the PCX 5300). I've been 100% Linux at home for ten years this month, and every moment of tinkering has been enjoyable worthwhile. I also, however, believe in building things that last. I'm also a software person at heart, and by comparison fiddling with hardware is a major pain. That's why I went to the effort of building a RAID array on real server hardware instead of (since I didn't have an unused system in the closet) trying to cobble together something from cheap $399 PC specials at CompUSA. I won't have to worry about upgrading the hardware there for a few years to come. Similarly, with the Myth frontend/backend, I bought a classy-looking Sony 3.0GHz Pentium 4 system at Fry's at its day-after-Thanksgiving sale--again for a terrific price--rather than trying to shoehorn my four year-old AMD desktop into the task or going for one of the el cheapo Celeron/Sempron wonders also advertised that day. In my experience this approach saves time, grief, and yes, money, in the long run. -- Yeechang Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
