[mythtv-users] Hardware recommendation for mythtv?

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Tue Oct 27 15:44:17 UTC 2009


Travis Tabbal wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 7:03 AM, Christian <CvB at kruemel.org> wrote:
>> I'm currently planning to replace my DVB-S receiver with a mythtv box, and
>> would be glad if anybody had a few comments on my plans.
>>
>> In terms of hardware, I am looking to get a Zotac ION MiniITX A-E Atom 330
>> DualCore, with 2 GB RAM (sufficient?), 500 GB HDD and a Blueray slim drive
>> (currently looking at an LG CT10N).
> 
> 
> I can't really comment on DVB as we don't have that here, but for
> bluray, is there a Linux ripping solution now? I haven't looked in a
> while so I'm not sure. I wouldn't spend the money unless there were a
> known good way to deal with that problem and the encryption. I know
> some Windows apps can break it, but last time I looked, the open
> source stuff wasn't quite there. Might be easier/cheaper to get a full
> size BD drive and use a desktop with Windows for that bit if it's
> really important to you.
> 
> 2GB RAM is fine. I run my Myth boxes on that much and have never
> gotten any errors over it, and very little swap use. The Atom might be
> a little slow if you plan to do more than record and playback.
> Commercial flagging and transcoding will be slower, but if you can
> live with that, it should get the job done. I seem to remember reading
> a review someone here did saying that it could keep up at almost
> realtime on HD, so that's not really that bad. Use VDPAU for playback
> and you should be fine.
> 
> The HDD and maybe the BD will be the loudest part of the system unless
> you get a really loud power supply. :) I didn't find it too bad to
> have the HDD in the livingroom, but it probably would have been
> annoying in a bedroom. When recording, it sounded like a loud clock,
> tick-tick about 1 sec intervals. I've moved to a master backend and
> converted my frontends to netboot to get rid of the storage in the
> devices. They are near silent now. Just need to get better fans.
> 
> I think your plan will work well overall if the tuner works well with Linux.

I have a Zotac ION-A (presently being used as VOIP PBX box). It works 
nicely as a mythbox.

The fan provided for the CPU is a little noisy, but is needed if you are 
driving the box hard. You might want to consider looking for a more 
quite replacement fan (40mm IRC). Or look for a 40-60mm reducer shroud 
and mount an even more quiet 60mm fan.

Geoff






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