[mythtv-users] Upgrade Suggestions - currently on myth 0.21 with PVR150, 250, 350

[James Pifer]

I've been running Myth since the 0.14 days. Couldn't live without it and
WAF is fairly high except for a couple nagging issues we've been
having. 

1) I'm running my mythbackend on a Dell Poweredge 1600SC. It
occasionally locks up. It's totally random and I believe it's hardware
related. Plus, on top of that, one of the fans has gone bad. 

2) Next is the bigger problem I've been fighting for a long time. We get
a lot of jumps or bad video in spots, but not on every video. I've
tracked which inputs had the bad recordings, and it doesn't point to a
specific card. I've ran with the unit open with a fan blowing on the
cards, and with it closed running it's normally fans (until the one
failed above). So I've never figured out of the cards are bad or not.

So I want to upgrade the hardware and at the same time get to a more
current release of mythtv. I currently have three PCI cards, 150, 250,
350, so finding a motherboard is doable, but limits me. 

I don't have HD cable, except for the free channels. My three separate
frontends don't have enough power to do HD on their end, some I'm not in
a hurry to do it anyway. 

SO, finally my questions:

Any specific motherboard/CPU suggestions with at least 3 PCI slots?

Are there any low priced, non-PCI options for replacing my Hauppauge
cards? 

I also run a pretty powerful xen server and I know I could put
mythbackend on there, but I can't use the PCI cards. I would have to
replace the tuner cards. I could pass through some USB ports. I wouldn't
mind doing it this way at all if I could do it and still have at least
three tuners.

Any alternative tuner options?

Any help is greatly appreciated. 

Thanks,
James