[mythtv-users] Opinions on my hardware choices for a new PVR

[Snoop Baron]

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for your detailed response. It is very helpful :).

>>Antec Overture case -- Should look good in the living room and is  
>>supposed to be quiet 
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>This case passed the "wife" test. There were a few others she liked even better, but 
>she would be willing to have one of these in the living room. Antec also makes a cude 
>case that would work well in some entertainment centers. 
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Other than the cube case were some of these others that your wife liked 
even better for a standard size ATX motherboard?

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>>Hauppauge PVR 350 -- for encoding and decoding 
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>>On my optional list I have: 
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>>Hauppauge PVR-250 -- for dual recording 
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>If you are planning on going out to the onboard video card anyway why spend the 
>extra cash on the 350? As far as I know the only way to make use of the onboard 
>mpg2 decode is to send the video output through it. I went this route to work around 
>the low end cpu on my via, but if I were building a full sized/powered system I would 
>spend the money on multiple 250s. 
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Will the TV output quality be as good as the 350 if I use the on board 
integrated graphics?

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>>Neatgear 54Mbps wireless card -- streaming video to other PCs? 
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>I have a friend that claims to be streaming via G wireless to his iBook laptop running 
>an OS X ported frontend, so it should work, esp for playback of highly compressed 
>video such as saved in mpeg4, but I think even mpeg2 works for at least a single 
>stream. I am told the B is a little dicy with mpeg2. 
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Thanks, this is very useful. I'll definitely be adding a G wireless card.

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>>Wireless keyboard and mouse -- For non-PVR uses, games, browsing the  
>>web, etc? (Any recommendations?) 
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>>I considered going with a VIA M1000 but it seems like the software  
>>support is not as good and/or trickier to setup. Plus there is less room  
>>for expansion and performance might not be that good if I go outside the  
>>PVR space (maybe add in some games for my little bro :) ). 
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>I wouldn't go with this line unless you have a compeling reason, size, space, cost, 
>curiosity, etc. I really love the small form factor of my Eden but I am about ready to 
>switch to something more powerful and easier to work with. I recently had a drive 
>crash and it took my about 3 or 4 days to get the thing back together because of all 
>the compiling on a slow box. 
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Thanks again, this is the sort of thing I needed to know. I'm going to 
stick with the ATX :).

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>>Well what do you guys think? 
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>I think your parents will really enjoy it. 
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Thanks :). I really think they will get a kick out of their new high 
tech and useful toy =) I can't wait to start building it!