[mythtv-users] advice for frontend/backend

[Jarod C. Wilson]

On Friday, Sep 19, 2003, at 07:59 US/Pacific, Keith C wrote:

> Thanks for the research!  I'll look at these ABit boards when I pull
> MythTv out of my primary PC and make it a dedicated box. Sure would be
> nice to have optical out without having to buy anything from Creative

I've decided I'm getting the Asus A7N8X-VM. With that little add-on 
bracket, you can get both optical and coax digital out, in addition to 
the onboard GF4MX. Oh, a local shop carries most of the Asus add-on 
stuff, so I'm golden on that. :)

> (still pissed that they discontinued support for my Mac Soundblaster
> card).

<off-topic>Heh. I've got one of those too... It sits on a shelf 
gathering dust now, because I refuse to ever use Mac OS 9 again (folks, 
if you've only used a Mac w/pre-OS X, you're missing out). They really 
did leave lots of people high and dry by not producing OS X drivers. I 
can't believe CompUSA still sells that card, and at the same price 
point as the M-Audio Revolution 7.1, which has outstanding drivers for 
pretty much every OS (the Mac SB never even did anything above 2.1 
digital), as well as being flat-out a better card than just about 
anything Creative spits out (IMHO).</off-topic>

>> The Pundit and Shuttle systems would look good and work well as a HTPC
>> front/back but only if you don't want to expand your system to say 
>> include a
>> 2nd tuner or more storage.

That's my biggest beef with them. Otherwise, they're great.

>> A Full-size ATX board in a tower gives TONS of
>> functionality, but aside from the Antec Overture (due late September) 
>> and
>> several varients of the Atech D.Vine series (which as $200+), there 
>> are
>> seemingly no good home theater sized, full-ATX capable desktop units 
>> (that
>> look like anything).

I'm assuming the Overture is the desktop counterpart to the Sonata, 
yes? I'm eying getting one of those (or more) to replace some very 
noisy cases I have right now...

>> So I too have gone the microATX way of thinking. Chaintech makes a 
>> microATX
>> board that has the Geforce MX S-Video out onboard. ABIT has microATX 
>> boards
>> in Intel and AMB (VIA) flavors that offer optical and coaxial SPDIF 
>> out.
>> ASUS has their A7N8X-VM board which would be excellent if they 
>> included the
>> nearly impossible to find SPDIF and Svideo out brackets.

Like I said, I've found the audio brackets, but never did find the DVI 
bracket. I'm now using a VGA->Component adapter though, so a non-issue 
for me. I just thought I would throw it out there that you CAN get DVI 
out from the onboard video controller IF you can find the bracket...

--Jarod

-- 
Jarod C. Wilson, RHCE

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