[mythtv-users] Hardware recomendation

German Pulido gapf2010 at gmail.com
Sat Jul 17 11:23:37 UTC 2010


On 07/15/2010 12:43 PM, Tyler T wrote:
>>> 1. Small form factor (something like a mac mini or even a dell zino, but not
>>> bigger)
>>>        
> There's always mini-ITX if you like building it yourself. There are
> many Dell Zino-like form factor cases available. As mentioned in
> another thread, I prefer ones with an external PS brick for less heat
> and ease of upgrading or replacing failed components.
>
>    
>>> 2. Because of 1, I think the TV tuner must be USB.
>>> 3. Ability to watch analog TV (my country uses NTSC standard)
>>>        
> See http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Video_capture_card#Analogue_cards_.28Hardware_Encoder.29
> , I see a few USB based tuners there. However some mini-ITX cases will
> accept one PCI/PCIe device (with a right-angle adapter) so that may
> broaden your options.
>
>    
>>> 5. IR remote control (supported by lirc). For this I guess any el-cheapo USB
>>> remote control would do, right?
>>>        
> The MCE USB remote
> (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MCE_Remote#Media_Center_Remotes) seems to
> be well supported and pretty painless. That's what I use.
>
>    
>> Have you considered storage? These small boxes usually run a single laptop
>> type HDD. With the higher seek times you see in those, I'd really recommend
>> putting the OS and recordings on different physical drives.
>> If you are doing mostly SD
>> recordings, you might get away with the single HDD.
>>      
> I'm running my BE OS, HDHR recordings, and diskless FE (via NFS) all
> off a single 2.5" drive attached via USB with no problems so far
> (though I only just got my FE installed last night). Of course, you
> should design in plenty of headroom rather than just scrape by with
> the minimum, but a single 2.5" drive is not impossible (especially if
> you select one based on performance). Also, I do not transcode or
> commflag, so these operations could well make the difference between
> working and not.
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>    
Thanks Travis and Tyler for your valuable suggestions. I'll check the 
links. One last question: I know USA doesn't use DVB-T standard, do you 
think it would be very hard/impossible getting a DVB-T USB tuner there? 
I'll be traveling to the US in a few weeks and would like to know if I 
can get there the required tuner.

Regards

German.


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