[mythtv-users] Cables and more space...ideas?

[Kevin Kuphal]

PAUL WILLIAMSON wrote:

>I've been running MythTV for about a year or so 
>now, and have frontends in quite a few rooms.  My 
>problem is twofold...
>
>1.  Wires.  I have a wife and kids, and all have 
>expressed discontent with the wires going from the 
>pc to the TV.  
>  
>
How many wires are we talking about?  This should be video and audio, 
maybe IR as well.  Buy the shortest wire capable of this and replace 
what you have.  Ideally you could buy it so that you can clamp or afix 
it to the cabinet that your TV/PC is in so you hardly see it at all.  Do 
the same with your network cable.   Think of it like you would with a 
server in a rack.  You don't run the cable down the middle of the rack 
dangling in front of all the equipment, you tie it tightly and route it 
through cable management rings to keep it organized and almost out of sight.

>2.  DVDs on Myth.  I have ripped quite a few (about 40%) 
>of our collection to Myth, but I've run out of space and 
>need to figure out what my next step is.
>
>My wife thought buying a DVD player for every room where 
>we now have a TV is a good idea.  To say that I hate that 
>idea is being gentle.  I could probably buy enough disks to 
>house the rest of the collection, but I have no more physical 
>space in my backend(s), and don't have another computer to 
>nfsmount more drives from either.
>  
>
Take the money you would spend on multiple DVD players and buy a huge 
hard disk + external firewire enclosure + firewire card (if you need 
it).  You can add as many of these as you need to increase your capacity 
and performance should be excellent.  You can get a 200GB EIDE drive now 
for about $70 without any rebates and maybe cheaper with, and that would 
hold a good amount of ripped DVDs.

Kevin