[mythtv-users] Few questions from new user

[Neil Bird]

Around about 26/09/05 10:27, Ben Edwards typed ...
> Firstly what processor should I get. I had a AMD Sempron 3000+ to 3400+ 
> in mind.  What I was hoping on being able to do is allow the TV card to 
> do the recording and have enough oomth in the CPU to be able to 
> decode/play at the same time as recording or do I need two TV cards to 
> do this.  Being able to play and record at the same time is very 
> important to me.  How do I wire things up to record/play at the same 
> time.  If I had two cards would I have one wired to record an the other 
> to play and do they have to be the same cards?

   I can't really comment on the Nova as I've not gone down the DVB route on 
my PVR yet, but it seems fairly common.  I don't believe the Nova would have 
TV-out (like the Hauppauge PVR-350 does), but I'm one of those who don't go 
for that sort of thing anyway, just a standard video-card with s-video out 
from eBuyer does it.  Got a decent high-res. one (1024x768 on the s-video out) 
for ~25-30. (recommend nvidia-based so you get their drivers from atrpms)

   You'll only need >1 Nova if you plan to record more than one channel at 
once.  Get one working first, I reckon, then add another later on if you get 
everything going OK.

   I use an Athlon 2200;  anything that or better should be OK, depending upon 
your pocket :)  You only need your CPU for playback decode (and advert 
transcoding), as the DVB stream is already compressed & will be dumped to the 
HD as-is.

   I only have 512 Mb RAM;  this causes some swapping on the frontend, I've 
found, after it's been left a bit, so I'm going to up it to 1Mb when I get the 
money.  Your call there, it does work OK, but it's stress I think the box can 
do without (e.g,. swapping while recording/playing back).

-- 
[neil at fnx ~]# rm -f .signature
[neil at fnx ~]# ls -l .signature
ls: .signature: No such file or directory
[neil at fnx ~]# exit