[mythtv-users] Recommendations for a new tuner card on a low-spec machine

[Gabriel J. Michael]

Hi all,

 

I'm working on putting together a (very) low-end MythTV box, only for
recording SD content. I've got a Celeron 700 with 512 MB RAM, a 40 GB 2.5"
hard disk, and onboard video and sound. I've been using KnoppMyth. In
defense of this low-spec machine, the thing is almost silent, and I've spent
a total of $10 on this project so far. I'd like to keep my expenses to a
minimum, because if I spend much more than $100, I may as well start looking
at new low end machines.

 

I was trying to use a Lifeview FlyVideo 3000 framegrabber that has an
SAA7134 chip, but the performance is unacceptable. Accordingly, I am in the
market for a new tuner card with hardware MPEG-2 encoding. A friend of mine
has recommended the widely-used Hauppage PVR-150, and the MythTV
documentation suggests that this will take a significant load off of my
processor. I have also been eyeing the PVR-500, as watching and recording at
the same time might be useful.

 

A few questions:

 

1.       Is there some way to configure MythTV to simply display live TV
without recording it (or to launch a tvtime-like application from within the
MythTV interface)? This way I could use the framegrabber I already have for
the sole purpose of viewing live TV, and use a PVR-150 for recording.

 

2.       If that won't work, and I get a PVR-500 (which is a little
expensive for me), would my hardware be able to keep up with two MPEG-2
streams?

 

3.       Does anyone else have any experience with low-end boxes like this?
Is it a worthwhile endeavor, or is there a high likelihood I'll be
disappointed with the picture quality, performance, etc. (480x480 or so
would be nice, maybe even a little higher).

 

4.       I'm trying not to hoard a lot of old TV shows, but if I find myself
wanting to move MythTV recordings to another computer for archival (one that
is NOT running MythTV - I have a Windows machine with two 500 GB drives),
will I be able to easily?

 

5.       I've heard rumors that new PVR-150s have a different chip that will
not work under Linux. Anyone know anything about this?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Gabe

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