[mythtv-users] two and one

[Curtis Stanford]

Adam Hirsch wrote:

> Hey, folks.  I have a couple of non-technical questions and one technical
> question, being new to the list.
> 
> The non-technical questions first, I suppose.
> 
> 1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV.  Is it the geeky
> pleasure of building something oneself?  Is it wanting to be independent
> from TiVo's feature control or fate?  Is it cost?  Is it the extra features
> that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?
> 
> Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I can't quite seem to make
> it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm trying to figure out
> why it's still really alluring to me to try building one.  Figured asking
> why it's alluring to other people might help illustrate it.  
> 

Well, in my case I live in a place where Tivo/replay/whatever is not 
available (Canada). MythTV also gives you an opportunity you'd never get 
with Tivo: adding your own features, themes, etc. Open source is cool. 
Plus you don't have to pay the Tivo fees and look over your shoulder for 
the DMCA police to knock down your door for modding your Tivo. :-0

> 2) What have people's experience been with the amount of time it takes to
> go from "Machine assembled and hard drive blank" to "Machine running mythtv
> reliably, recording, scheduling, playing back"?  Anyone had a very short or
> very long breaking-in period, i.e. fixing minor audio/video glitches,
> getting channel-changes happening reliably, etc?  Anyone on the list have a
> non-technical family member who's taken to mythtv easily?
> 

Don't know yet.

> 3) the technical question: I think the Shuttle cases are gorgeous little
> boxes, and am thinking of one as an all-in-one mythtv box.  Anyone had
> experience, good or bad, with using the onboard audio and s-video from
> shuttle in conjunction with mythtv?  (Specifically, audio: Realtek ALC650,
> video: VIA Savage8)  If I could get away with just putting a hauppage card
> in there and not needing a separate gfx or sound board, the machine begins
> to look nice and lean (and more importantly, cooler and cheaper).
> 

I had a Shuttle (AMD/nvidia2) and was never successful getting the built 
in video to work right. In my experience, Shuttles are also noisy little 
bastards. The fan whine would go up and down constantly, driving me 
nutso. I've been told that replacing the stock fan with something else 
would help. However, I ended up taking mine back.

> Thanks,
> 
> Adam
>