[mythtv-users] Hardware recommendations

[Joshua Goldenhar]

On Fri, 2003-10-17 at 13:16, Louie Foster wrote:
> Hello all,
>   I have some quick questions hopefully, I have searched through the archives and
> come up with multiple possibilities of hardware configurations for mythtv, but
> being totally ignorant with PVR's and tv capture encoding/decoding and such, I
> would like some recommendations for the following desires.
> A standalone computer as quiet as humanly possible. I am not linux savvy enough to
> jump into front ends(yet). I was thinking the ITX stuff but I keep reading a lot
> of messages about jumpy OSD and playback, are their certain cards that will
> eliminate these side effects? IF there is no fix, is it something that will/could
> be fixed in the future?
> Sound, I'd prefer using the DAC's on my reciever rather than the built in audio,
> is this possible with the VIA ITX boards?

I just finished building up a box using an ASUS P4S533-MX board - it was
$66 US +tax.  It's Micro ATX (smaller than ATX but bigger than MiniATX).
It has 1 4x AGP slot and 3 PCI slots.  It has built in video but I've
disabled it (no TV out). One really nice feature for what you've
mentioned is that is has Surround sound decoder based on the AC'97
chipset and has a coaxial digital out which a friend of mine has hooked
up to his stereo (with ALSA drivers) and has received appropriate
digital audio for music (2-channel) - hasn't tried a dvd yet. It's also
got built in 10/100 ethernet and lots of USB ports, but no firewire. 
I'm running with 2.4 GHz Celeron.

I use the PVR-250 and am happy with it.

I'm not happy with my Geforce 4 MX440-64 card - but it's an MSI
technologies card  (Taiwanese cheapie...) and the TV out quality is not
great - I think they skimped on the TVout chip....

BTW, I purchased a brand new ACTiSYS IR blaster to control my Comcast
Digital cable box (DCT2244) and ended up getting the serial cable
control working - so I don't need the IR blaster - anybody want it for
$20US? (I'm in Seattle area if that makes a difference.)

josh
> 
> Thanks in advance for any recommendations.
> 
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