[mythtv-users] Newbie needs help choosing hardware for use in the UK

[Alexander Fisher]

Hello.

I had a little play with mythTV over the weekend and was very impressed.
Great work guys!  I was using an old Hauppaggue frame grabber and no
soundcard, but it did suffice as proof of concept.

I'm now ready to take the plunge and invest in some proper hardware.  I've
got a base PC which I think will be good enough and I plan to get a
secondhand xbox to use as a frontend.

Here's the spec of what I've got...

Gigabyte GA-6BXD MB
Dual Pentium III 800Mhz
352MB 100Mhz SDRAM
250GB PATA HD (Western Digital)
30GB PATA HD with Debian Sarge installed.
nVidia MX200 (but I guess this isn't relevant for a backend only system)

Living in the UK, 2 DVB cards seem to be the way forward.  Am I right in
thinking that they all produce MPEG2 streams so no encoding has to be done
in software?  I've come up with a 3 card shortlist all available from
www.scan.co.uk (where I'll be placing an order for some unrelated stuff
later this week.) They are ...

Avermedia DVB-T PCI Card £64.44
Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-T Freeview receiver PCI (909) £62.06 Vision + PCI TV
Tuner - HDTV Compatible + Remote £46.06

Do all these cards definately have suitable drivers?  I think I read
somewhere that not all Nova-T's were the same.  I wouldn't want to end up
with an unsupported variant.
Or should I just go for the cheapest?  Shouldn't the outputted MPEG2 stream
be identical for each card?  The option to receive some of the top-up-tv
channels might be good too.  Has anybody got this working yet?

I'm hoping that the system will be capable of recording two programmes,
whilst simultaneously letting me watch a previously recorded show on the
xbox.  I don't suppose I'll want to do this that often but it would be nice.

Since my MB only supports UDMA-2, I'm also thinking of buying an addon PCI
ATA card.
I'm guessing I won't need any soundcards in a DVB only system?

Wow, what a lot of questions!  I really hope that somebody can help me out
with some of these.

Thanks!
Alex