[mythtv-users] For HD Myth users, what is/was your cost?

Travis Tabbal travis at tabbal.net
Mon Nov 23 21:27:52 UTC 2009


On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Bobby Gill <bobbygill at rogers.com> wrote:

> I am curious what the total cost is/was for you to get everything up and
> running (asides from time, which depending on whom you are may be the
> priciest...).
>
> So for example, an HD capture card, a capable backend, the frontend(s) of
> course, the subscription to a provider and/or an antenna-- and if an
> antenna, did you do it yourself? Order it online, buy from a shop, hire
> someone to install, etc.? Not necessarily asking for the life story but some
> brief explanation of the components as I'm really trying to get a gauge on
> what entering this arena may cost me, and whether it's /worth/ it or not...
>



If I were to do it now, I'd make the frontends with Aspire Revo boxes
$200/ea. The backend can be somewhat slow if you don't want to do
commflagging or transcoding, but assume you want to do those and get a good
server box. Those $75 servers the other poster is selling would make a nice
backend box with an SATA card and a couple HDDs. Then you need a tuner or
capture card. I went with the HDHomerun and an antenna. The Antenna was
purchased online from solidsignal.com. I used a DB4, and installed it
myself. I get excellent signal for OTA HD channels. I believe the antenna
cost me about $50.

If you want to supplement with online sources that are flash based like
Hulu, you need more CPU in the frontend boxes. You can build uATX based
machine with a pretty fast dual-core AMD for not much more than the $200 for
the Revos if you want that. If you can find sources of h264 or MPEG2 video
without Flash, the Revos will work fine. It's Flash that sucks, not the
videos themselves. If Adobe would implement VDPAU, this would be a
non-issue.
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