[mythtv-users] Brand new hardware

[Clyde Stubbs]

On Sat, Jun 05, 2004 at 06:19:13PM -0700, Ryan Allen wrote:
>     If you were to purchase a brand new system, fully set up for MythTV,
>     save the hardware decoder perhaps, where would you go for the

I've just done that for a friend. Here's my recommendation:

M/B - Any micro-ATX with socket A, SPDIF out. Forget the
on-board video. The one I chose was a DFI KM400-MLV.
Pick one that does not have a second fan (for noise reasons).
This rules out some of the nForce boards.

Video - A Radeon 9200SE card - low profile, excellent TV-out.
The 64MB cards are a few bucks cheaper than 128 and you don't
need that much for TV. With the CPU as below, h/w mpeg decode
is not required (though the chipset is supposedly capable of it,
but no Linux support at this time).

RAM - get 512.

Hard disk - 200GB - I'm told Seagate are quieter.

CPU - Athlon XP2000+ or faster, but remember faster is hotter is noisier.

Case - so far my favourites are the Aopen H340H - very small, looks
good, but only takes low-profile PCI cards,
and the Antec Aria - this is a "cube" style case, but takes standard
micro-ATX boards, has a huge 120mm power supply fan (bigger=quieter)
and memory card slots on front. Takes full-height PCI and has
space for several drives (no floppy but who cares).
Haven't used one yet but probably will soon.

Capture cards depends on where you are - I'm using DVB-T cards, and
the Avermedia DVB-T 771 is the best value currently. It's also
low-profile!

I'd recommend staying away from Dell - my experience with Dell
systems is that they are very hard to upgrade.


Cheers, Clyde

-- 
Clyde Stubbs                     |            HI-TECH Software
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