[mythtv] Hardware advice (Via Eden Board) / Video Card.

[Christoph Neumann]

On 25 Nov 2002, Mr. Adam ALLEN wrote:

> On Mon, 2002-11-25 at 23:26, Tony Clark wrote:
> > On Monday 25 November 2002 23.09, Jeremy Oddo wrote:
> > 
> > > I'd say the biggest problem with most people is the sound--you really need
> > > to be able to use ALSA sound.  IMO, it's wise to get "popular"
> > > sound/video/capture cards as those are usually the ones that have proper
> > > drivers.
> > 
> > No offence but I find ALSA to be a major PITA.  I'm using a soundblaster live 
> > card with OSS.  Simple and it works.  You make need to tell kde to use OSS 
> > and not auto detect sound.
> > 
> > I would really love to get my SMP athlon quiet.  I have tried various fans for 
> > the few extra bucks, different cpu coolers and PSUs.  You can make them 
> > liveable with but not sleepable.  I've also been thinking about a low noise 
> > solution just for this and ínstall something to make the output streaming or 
> > just use a remote xterm.
> 
> 
> My linux router is under my bed, and the replacement drive is too loud
> (it's a 166Mhz before CPU's and PSU's needed fans). I'm of the opinion
> now that the constant unchanging noise from the CPU fan is better than
> the hard-drive writing data on/off.
> 
> It'd be nice to encode on my big box (Athlon 1Ghz + 384Mb RAM), and then
> do the decoding on the AMD 450, could cope with leaving on 25/7.
> Although that doesn't exist yet does it. (Sometimes I wish my
> programming were better). It'd be nice to export the spool file to the
> "decoding" box, which simply does the frontend tasks - and using
> client/server to start/stop the encoding on the "encoder".
> 
> The other option- not found details of if this available yet; would be
> nice to put a new video card (w/tv-out) into the existing box, and have
> the mythtv projected onto the second display. I've not looked into
> multi-headed displays with Linux yet, and don't know if this can be done
> within Linux with some redirection trickery.

I have setup my computer so that mythtv runs in it's own X session.  
Basically, I do "xinit /usr/X11R6/bin/fvwm2 -- :1 -screen TV" and then run
"mythfrontend" when the xsession comes up.  "TV" is a custom-defined 
"screen" in my XF86Config:

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "TV"
        Device "NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS (generic)"
        Monitor "ViewSonic PS"
        DefaultDepth 24
        Subsection "Display"
                Depth 24
                Modes "800x600"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

I can then switch between my normal X session and my MythTV xsession with
the "Ctrl+Alt+F7" and "Ctrl+Alt+F8" sequences.  I'm working on mapping
hotkeys to run scripts to enable/disable TV out since the NVidia card I
have has problems when I switch X sessions with the TVout enabled.

- Christoph

> After reading the archives (can't quite understand why I didn't do that
> before the initial post!) - I've decided against the VIA on board
> integrated thing. I've been interested in Transmeta - but not dived into
> this enough, or found where to source board/processor in single qty's
> over in the UK.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Adam
> 
> EMAIL   :	adam@dynamicinteraction.co.uk
> 
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