[mythtv-users] New system configuration

[paul10 at planar.id.au]

My 10c worth.

> - Several televisions in separate rooms, each their own channel selector


Once you have myth, you'll stop doing this.  I almost never watch live tv
any more - that limits me to watching only what's on right now.  I set myth
to record the stuff I actually like, and when I have time to watch TV I
watch that.  This is the biggest benefit of myth for me - not sitting down
and thinking "there's nothing good on TV".  So long as you're watching
recorded TV, not live, then you really have now problems with channel
selectors/live tv.

> - Several music outlets, both from (internet) radio and stored CD's
Some have said that mythmusic isn't the right application.  I've actually
used it for years, and it works just fine for me.  Clunky yes, but if you
use mythweb to build your playlists, then for playback mythmusic is good. 
Having it all integrated means I'll put up with a little clunkiness.  And,
of course, there's a rewrite coming that will make it beautiful.

> No, not really - the Ion boxes don't make very good backends
Agree.  The backend needs lots of disk (= very large case), and needs
enough power to do commercial flagging and any other miscellaneous server
duties.  Transcoding is also an option if you're short of space (although I
eventually just bought enough disk to not have a problem - far easier than
messing around with transcoding).  The ion comes at a bit of a premium
because of the display card, low power and often fanless operation.  None
of which are a priority in a server.  As others have said, get a lower cost
quad core instead, and whatever cheap display card you can find.

The ion, however, is a great frontend.  

> How I control it is something I don't get right now.
You don't as such.  You set up recording rules, it records the stuff you
told it you're interested in.  The rules are setup either through one of
the front ends, or through mythweb.  Once set up, it just records things
for you.  From the front end, you pick the recordings that you want to
watch. Not so complicated once you get your head around it.

> Yes possible, though Live TV has always been a bit unreliable on Mythtv
> for me. It may be better on new versions.
I've generally found it pretty good.  Nonetheless, I don't use it much,
because the odds of what I want to watch being on exactly when I want to
watch it is low - so as I said earlier, I generally watch pre-recorded
stuff.  I actually find that Myth is finding about 4-5 hours of TV that I'm
interested in a day.  I watch less than 1 hour of TV a day, so I'm in no
danger of running out of things to watch.  My bigger problem is making sure
it deletes it all so that I can record new stuff - and setting priorities
on the recordings takes pretty good care of that.

My recommendation to the OP is to start with a cheap/old machine you have
hanging around.  Put on mythbuntu, drop in a single tuner card.  Play with
it for a while to see if it's for you.  If it is, get a newer/faster/bigger
backend, and some frontends.  Be careful about buying gear that is too
flash or too new - that can be a real trap for people new to Linux.  Gear
that's about 1 year old is usually the sweet spot - not too old, not too
expensive, and not going to be too hard to find support for it in Linux. 
If it's too new, you'll be compiling your own kernel to get it working, and
that isn't something you want to do on day 1.