[mythtv-users] New Backend - Hardware suggestions

[Jonny B]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 6:52 AM, Christian Hocken <christian at hocken.net> wrote:
>
> Am 16.11.2008 um 14:02 schrieb Jonny B:
>
>>> HDD(Raid 5):    3x WD Caviar Green 1TB. Not sure if WD Green are fast
>>> enough. I believe they're spinning slower.
>>
>> I have 4 WD Green 640gb SATA drives. They are all running individual
>> XFS filesystems and are setup in my storage groups. I have 2 pinnacle
>> HD capture cards picking up ATSC signals and a PVR150 picking up
>> commiecast's Standard Cable (because they don't send the digital in
>> clearQAM, but that's another thread) So far, I have had zero problems
>> recording on all 3 cards while watching TV also. They should do you
>> well.
>>
>> ~Jon
>
> Sounds promising. They seem to be the best choice if low power
> consumption is a prerequisite.

Ironically, wasn't the reason I bought them. The $69/ea pricetag at
newegg was the reasoning behind the purchase, trusting western digital
drives from past experience (I could get hitachi 1tb drives for $109
ea, but I have had poor experience with hitachi in the past).

As for ram, I only use 1gb in my frontend, and 1gb in my backend, and
have no issues, but they are separate, so performance may vary in a
combined fe/be system.

I use a 2.8HT P4 with a GeForce4400MX for playback, but had some
issues getting the playback profile working, so I would suggest more
power if you can get it, but will guarantee that the setup works with
enough tweaking. I think it worked better before I upgraded graphics
drivers, (which came with a full update from opensuse10.3 to
opensuse11.0) as I used XvMC before, and now that doesn't seem to
work, so drivers will also make a difference. I've been looking to
roll back drivers, but not wanting to mess with what's working, I've
decided to just wait a little longer and build a new, diskless
frontend when the new nvidia hardware support comes to be (stable).

~Jon