David,
Thanks for the post, missed this before I made a few new posts.
I'm feeling more comfortable about my older hardware now. I think the only obstacle at this point is deciding
on which PVR-XXX to actually go with...
However,
I just spoke to a friend today, that has a pvr-350 and a pvr-250 in the same rig usin ga p4 1.4ghz.
He had initially used a pvr-250 and had some trouble with getting the tv to display the output properly.
This is why he added the pvr-350.
I'm wondering if there are particular graphics cards I should be wary of regarding using in conjunction with one pvr-250.
yes yes, I should probably be trolling the mythtv forums for this info, but you folks have been so helpful.
David Rasch wrote:
I've recently setup a MythTV machine with a Duron 800Mhz and a WinTV PE which requires software encoding of video. This machine functions perfectly well when recording at a reasonable resolution (352x240). The picture is quite nice and the user is very happy. The only point here is that I'd be very suprised if this processor were unable to handle a capture card using hardware encoding since it can handle software encoding and playback/decoding simultaneously.
-David
On Monday 21 March 2005 16:28, Myrhillion wrote:
Hmm, I hadn't realized how "cheap" relatively the athlon xp's have become (haven't built a rig in a while). I might just have to build a whole new computer for this project (*laughs maniacally*).
However, I'm wondering if the duron 800 I have will do with a hauppauge PVR-250. Do you have any problems recording and watching a totally different show with your setup, even when it's like timeshifted to skip commercials?
Anyway, I'm getting more excited about actually doing this from the feedback I've received from the list. I had actually read up on the FC3 mythtv howto you mentioned. It seems a bit complicated but doable.
I may still stick with gentoo for the distro. I'll have to sign-up to that myth user list next. Thanks for info Ken, it's appreciated seeing what other folks are using.
Doug Taggart
Ken Mink wrote:
I just finished building a MythTV box a couple of months ago. I'm now using it full time. I'm very happ with it and rarely switch over to my TiVo.
I'm using a 2600 Barton processor(overkill) and 512MB RAM. I bought a Samsung SP160N HD. The Samsung drives are QUIET. I mean I thought the drive was DOA when I installed it because I couldn't even hear it spin up. The motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X-VM/400. I'm using it's built-in Geforce4 w/tv-out and it's built-in sound. I'm also using a Hauppauge PVR-250 as a tuner.
I went with FC3 as a base and used the ATRPMS repostitory for the myth installation. There's a great how-to for installing MythTV on FC. As long as you read and follow it carefully, you'll have MythTV up and running in no time.
As for your question about the PVR-250 vs 350. The 350 has it's own tv-out capabilities. This includes a built-in mpeg decode. Both cards have encoders. The theory is that with a 350, the card does both the encoding and decoding and your cpu doesn't have to get involved. From what I've read, the 350's tv-out can be a pain to configure. On the myth-users list, I see a lot of people that have 350s, but don't use it's output capabilities.
Good Luck, Ken
On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 11:50:02 -0500, Myrhillion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hello,
I have recently gotten interested in building a mythtv box. I checked my trilug messages and found there was a meeting in December which featured mythtv. Drats, I've missed my opportunity.
Does anyone know if the presentation is available online somewhere? I'd like to discuss what people have for hardware too.
Here is the basic machine I'm considering.
I'm considering recycling an athlon duron 800 with 512 mb ram. I'm thinking gentoo or a debian based distro like ubuntu for the OS. The machine by itself would be too slow so, I'm going to buy a tv card, probably a hauppage (sp?) wintv 250 or 350. Has anyone seen any benefit of the 350 over the 250 in practice? Any other tv tuners people have been impressed with to use for this purpose? I'll be adding a larger hard drive, probably 200gb range. A wireless nic so I can save some of the shows I want to keep to a larger file server and to grab the xmltv feed. This will also make it simple to keep downstairs with the stereo tv etc..
Doug Taggart
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