[mythtv-users] Cost of MythTV Machines

[Michael T. Dean]

On 01/23/2006 11:50 AM, Dave Jones wrote:
>  If you want to use a digital cable box over firewire, you only need 
> to spend $15 for a firewire card and you can get by with a fairly 
> "cheap" set of components for the rest of the box (probably even a 
> scavenged box).
Isn't that $15 plus $6-$10/month forever...  Adds up to $60 (cost of a 
PVR-150) really fast...

If you want digital TV (and HDTV!), the HD-3000 for $169.98 plus an 
antenna (I got a high-end 16'x12' VHF/UHF antenna for $130) and no 
recurring payments... but that assumes your local broadcasters are 
actually transmitting HDTV.

> However, if you skimp (like me) and grab the $20 Hauppauge cards, you 
> will pay for it with what you need on the rest of the components. I 
> have a Celeron 2 GHz doing both FE and BE with the 2 bttv tuners, and 
> it stutters when recording 2 and watching 1.
>
> Taking lessons learned, I would much rather spend $100 more per tuner 
> to get an MPEG 2 capture card rather than cough up an extra $100-200 
> for a more expensive CPU and motherboard.

Definitely.  With hardware encoders, you can keep adding them.  I've 
done 4xPVR-250 while watching a previously-recorded show, but I can't 
imagine trying to do 4x software encoding while watching something else.
> The downside? Well, if time were money, I would be bankrupt. :) And 
> nobody could afford hobbies.
Exactly!

Mike