[mythtv-users] Hardware questions

[Reid Peryam]

I'm building this computer in order to act solely as a TiVo (for the 
immediate future). Here goes.

1. Where the hell can I buy this PCI "video encoder" that is talked 
about on MythTV.org's website? Haven't found one yet.

2. How good of a sound card should I buy? I was thinking of going 
cheap, but then I was thinking that if the entire signal is going to be 
coming from the computer to the television, I should probably have 
something that can sound pretty good (6-channel for option of speakers).

3. Is a video card important at all? The encoder will probably be 
pushing all of the bits, I'm thinking. I was thinking of going with two 
separate cards, a video card and separate PCI TV tuner. If Graphics 
aren't at all important then I'm thinking that an AGP 4x/8x motherboard 
isn't needed?

4. Is the TV tuner important at all? It seems as though all you need it 
for is the coaxial line-in port. Any other things I should look for 
when buying it or is bare bones good enough?

5. Hard Drive. The website says about 2 gigabytes/hour while recording. 
For some reason this seems really low to me. Is that for a smaller 
resolution? So the drives are all pretty cheap, but what I'm thinking 
of is that if I had a 10,000 RPM drive (¡Á 7,200) fast forwarding and 
track marks would respond *much* faster. There is a huge price 
difference though and the max capacity for a 10,000 RPM drive is only 
36 megabytes. Maybe one 10,000 rpm drive for main usage and a residual 
7,200 drive for spill over? I doubt I'd be recording more than 10 hours 
at a time (length of two football games), even over vacations. Any 
thoughts?

6. Linux. I've never done a thing in Linux but have experience in 
UNIX... anyway I'm hoping to learn. Also -- Red Hat, Madrake, Debian 
etc. -- which is right? MythTV seems to suggest that Red Hat has a 
bunch of settings that are naturally in conflict with it that need to 
be modded, yet Red Hat seems to be the most popular version. I was 
gunning to install the barest of Linux OSs on this computer as I'm not 
using it for anything except TiVoing, MP3s, and maybe a few games.

7. Is more than 256 RAM worth it?

8. Will I be able to record two separate channels at the same time? If 
so do you think I should dual process it? What other components will be 
affected?

This is so much more expensive than buying a TiVo but it's going to be 
a lot more fun!

Thanks!