[mythtv-users] UK based system

[Ian Barton]

> Choosing TV hardware can be a minefield. I'd recommend checking over
> the LinuxTV wiki when choosing DVB-T and DVB-S/DVB-S2 cards as there's
> a lot of helpful information on cards to avoid, and cards that are
> well supported. Looking at
> http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T_Devices and
> http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-S2_Devices will be helpful.
> 
> If buying components now, I'd be sure to get nVidia-based video
> cards/integrated chipsets that support VDPAU. I'd be more than tempted
> to get nVidia ION platform-based frontends for their small form
> factor, HDTV capability and quietness. A Core2Duo/Quad or AMD
> equivalent should be fine for all backend tasks. 2GiB RAM is probably
> plenty, but with it being so cheap I'd probably go for 4GiB.
> 
> You don't say what version of MythTV your 'consumer' MythTV box is
> running or what TV cards it uses, but I record and listen to a lot of
> BBC radio and neither have the radio-specific problems you report, nor
> have problems with recordings aborting. Those are not normal features
> of the current 0.21 stable release.
> 
Just to add a little to what Nick said. I use the Antec Sonata case. 
It's three years old, so my exact model may not be currently available. 
It's a midi tower, with plenty of room. It's not completely silent, but 
is very quiet. The noise is not noticeable in our lounge, but then we do 
have three children:)

I don't do HD, so my backend is relatively low powered (some sort of 
dual core Athlon). Like Nick said you should be able to record and 
listen to radio - I do it all the time. You may want one of the scripts 
than converts the mpg stream to mp3 if you want to listen on another 
device. There is a setting, which of course I can't find now, you may 
need to alter to make Myth record streams with no video content.

I would suggest considering making your system RAID1 (mirrored disks). 
You can do this using Linux's software raid. My whole system, including 
the boot partition is RAID. This has saved me twice over the years we 
disks have failed.

In general my system is very reliable. The backend will stop about once 
or twice a week (the system is on 24 hrs). However, if you run monit it 
will automatically restart it for you.

Ian.