[mythtv-users] HDTV Hardware Question

Steven Adeff adeffs.mythtv at gmail.com
Thu Feb 2 00:44:08 UTC 2006


On 2/1/06, Tony Enriquez <t_enriquez at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'm planning on building a new myth box to support a
> DCT6412 set top box.  I confirmed through the cable
> company the 6412 will have the firewire port enabled
> and plan on using that to feed standard and high
> definition signals to the myth box.  If I am using the
> IEEE1394 port, I am assuming I don't need a tuner
> card.  Is that assumption correct?

the 6412 is their dual tuner box iirc, in which case you'll want to
get the 6200 for MythTV use. Second, don't expect to get all the
channels via firewire, 5C may be enabled preventing this. Before
building anything, get a 6200 in your hands, connect it to your tv and
use the service menu to see if 5C is enabled by your cable company.

If all looks good from here, then yes, you will be able to use the
cable box as a tuner and connect as many as you want via firewire. No
internal tuner required.


> I'm also looking for information regarding
> motherboard/processor/video card combinations which
> would support a myth box with the DCT6412.  I have
> been using FC4 on an older P4 2GHz/512MB with great
> success but I don't think it will support HDTV.  Are
> there users out there using the firewire input?  If
> so, what is your hardware setup?  Thanks in advance.

Your only issue will be playback of HDTV, though you can manage if you
have an nVidia card and enable XvMC for playback. If you want to go
the route of using just your CPU you will need something closer to
3Ghz, as always the faster the better. You may even be able to use the
same motherboard and just place a faster CPU in it. Firewire captures
don't stress the CPU as much as the harddrives. A single drive can
handle about 2 HD streams at a time, using a RAID 5 array you can
increase this. It is also suggested to use a seperate drive for your
recordings. 512MB of RAM should be fine, my be/fe box is running with
512MB.

--
Steve


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