[mythtv-users] Soliciting Opinions on MythTV Hardware (Frontend Diskless?)

[David Bourgoyne]

First, I love my MythTV.  I have a 2400+ AMD box Frontend/Backend with a 
Hauppauge WinTV card and everything works great.  Now I want to expand 
my MythTV system.  Namely, I want to add a second tuner card to the AMD 
box and a quiet MythTV Frontend (preferably diskless).  The new Frontend 
will go on a TV in the gameroom and therefore needs TVout.  Here are my 
thoughts and questions.

1. I first considered a VIA EPIA ME6000 because it's fanless.  However, 
I don't think it has enough horsepower to decode MPEG4 640x480 which is 
what my Backend currently encodes.  It appears the author of MiniMyth 
has this board working with the Hardware MPEG2 encoder.  He has a 
Hauppauge PVR350 in his backend.  I could follow this route and add a 
PVR350 in my backend.  However I think my current Hauppauge WinTV card 
becomes useless for this new frontend, because it cannot encode as 
MPEG2.  Unless there is an option for software encoding MPEG2 that I am 
unaware of.

2. I then considered a VIA EPIA M10000.  More horsepower, but it has a 
noisy fan.  This presumably has enough horsepower to decode MPEG4 and I 
could then just add another WinTV card to the backend.

This brings up a question.  Can the backend have a WinTV card encoding 
MPEG4 and a PVR350 encoding MPEG2?  I'm assume this will work, but will 
the frontend do the right thing.  That is detect the format and in the 
case of MPEG2 use the hardware decoder?

3. Buy a Shuttle or ASUS Pundit.  Noisy.  Although I hear the Pundit 
with it's variable speed fan can be rather quiet.  More $$$.  But plenty 
of horsepower.

While I have your attention, I do have a separate question.  What is the 
purpose of transcoding and how is it used.  I currently have 4 recording 
profiles: Default, Live TV, Transcode and Transcode-Archive.  I don't 
quite understand when Transcode-Archive is used.  If I go into settings 
and then Transcode-Archive, MythTV FrontEnd dies.  I've used the "X" key 
to start transcoding with a cutlist.  Is this the main purpose of 
transcoding or am I missing something?

Thanks,

- David