[mythtv-users] How hard is it to build an HD MythTV?

[jedi]

On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 10:07:40AM -0700, allene222 wrote:
> 
> I am getting ready to buy a new computer to do this but have a question
> before I spend the big bucks.  How much difficulty am I going to have
> getting this thing running right?  I don't want to buy everything and find I
> can't get it to work.
> 
> I know, it depends.  Background: I have put together a web and email server
> and have maintained it for maybe 10 years.  Problem is it is so stable that
> I forget everything by the time it comes to change anything as I don't use
> Linux otherwise.  For example, changing to Fedora 5 from Red-Hat 7 was a
> huge pain.  I have done a fair amount of C programming, so that isn't an
> issue.  I have also programmed in php and have limited exposure to MySQL. 
> (I coded www.paloaltophoto.com in a text editor for example).
> 
> But I read the solutions posted in this forum and they go right over my
> head.  Oh, just put this patch in some conf file...  Then what, recompile

    Some things tend to be complicated and there's no getting around that.
Although those bits have gotten recently a lot easier (lirc & ivtv). However,
some combinations of hardware are just more trouble just as certain hardware
is always more trouble on Linux (like ATI video or wifi).

[deletia]

    If you pay attention long enough it's easy to hear what works.
  
    In my own experience, using an HD homerun has been much easier
than dealing with a cheap QAM card (air2pc). You can even get them
retail at Microcenter now.

    As far as display goes, I have had very good experiences with
the DVI ports on my mac minis. They support both svideo and HDMI
cheaply and fairly easily. So I would tend to recommend nvidia or
intel vidcards with dvi ports at this point.

    I've found display profiles in 0.21 a bit of a chore though.
I've yet to find satisfactory results with HD using the internal
player. CPU usage is about 3x what is is in xine.