[mythtv-users] New MythTV user

[Torsten Schenkel]

Am Mo, den 05.01.2004 schrieb Shawn Asmussen um 05:43:
>  
> 
> Unfortunately, my first appearance here is in the middle of a heated
> debate that hopefully won’t turn into an all out flamewar… I’m not
> usually so argumentative, but if you happen to push one of my hot
> buttons…

> But, on to actual technical stuff… 

> I noticed the ‘review my stats’ email somebody put up, so I thought
> I’d put up a description of how I’m planning on configuring my box and
> see if anybody saw any particular issues with it.

> I ordered a Dell 400SC, since Dell had it on sale pretty cheap. I
> could have got it for $300 shipped, but I upgraded to the
> hyperthreading configuration for an extra $100. I figured $400 was a
> pretty good deal for a machine that has HT. There’s not much of a
> video card, but since I’m putting in a PVR-350 for the output, I
> figured “Who cares, anyway?”

Hmm, what I've heard from DELL machines is not on the quiet side. With
HT you can't even do a lot about it, since it need the airflow. A
replacement PSU would be ~20% of the machines total, so not an issue.

> Specs:

> Pentium 4 2.4 GHz - 800Mhz FSB (I upgraded to the 800Mhz FSB to get a
> CPU with hyperthreading)
> 
> 128MB memory (I can add more later, but it’s too expensive to get it
> directly from Dell)

Too less, it will work, but you will need swap, and that's loud again.

> 40GB hard drive

That's a little bit too small, especially with high-res mpeg2
recordings.

> Onboard NIC

No problem

> For the TV tuner, I’ve orderd a WinTV PVR-350. The machine and the PVR
> card are both scheduled to arrive this week.

Good choice, but especially then the HT is total overkill.
> 
> My plan is to start with the basic configuration above, to get the
> system working. I’ll probably be using either Fedora, or Mandrake but
> I haven’t decided which way to go now that RedHat is dropping support
> for their basic product. I’ve been a RedHat user for many years now,
> and I still haven’t quite figured out what distro to migrate to on all
> of my boxes yet. The OS will go on the 40GB internal drive, and while
> I’m getting the system up and running, so will the stored programs.
> Once I’m up and running however, my plan is to add a SATA drive (The
> 400SC has onboard SATA), and keep the programs on a separate drive/bus
> from the OS. Also, that will leave the secondary IDE channel freed up
> for a DVD burner upgrade later. 

OK,

> While I’m getting the whole thing setup, I’m planning on just
> connecting to my network via the onboard adapter, but once I’m happy
> with the way it’s setup, I want to move it into the living room, and
> at that point I would like to put in a PCI or USB wireless adapter and
> connect that way. Has anybody run MythTV over a wireless network, and
> if so how well did it work? I figure that 802.11b might be a little
> bandwidth restrictive if I were to add a second front end sometime in
> the future, but I’ll be going with 802.11g, which should hopefully be
> fast enough. That’s just conjecture on my part though, so if anybody
> has any actual experiences with this, I’d appreciate hearing about it.

802.11g should be enough. But is there no possibility to run cables?


Torsten
-- 
Walkthrough: MythTV on Epia with PVR350 using Debian:
http://www-isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hi93/myth/mythtv_debian_epia_pvr350_walkthrough