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Steve Biddle wrote:
> Are any of the Via Mini ITX boards with onboard TV out any good with MythTV?
> Are these boards powerful enough to do a good job? What speed Via processor
> would I ideally need for a usable system or am I better looking at something
> else such as a P4/Celeron ITX board?
>
I am currently experimenting with a loaner SP13000 with intent to buy. I
am running "minimyth" which is a 90M MythTV distro(!!!). I'm running it
diskless, via PXE-boot (and NFS) from a central server with 200G
allocated diskspace. I'm running it over 100M Ethernet - but even over
802.11g wireless it works 99% of the time (wireless tends to be not as
consistent as Ethernet - especially when your card decides it has to
drop the Access Point and reconnect). In fact I've my wife (Mac), my
laptop (FC4) and this minimyth frontend all going simultaneously ;-)

Performance wise, video is great. However, I don't like the fan noise
(hence my earlier question on sourcing fanless EPIA). They're not
"noisy", but they are noticeable. However, I can't get the soundcard to
work on it at the moment - I think it's a hardware problem as Knoppix
boot-CD can't even successfully say the "Knoppix has finished booting"
thing it does.

There: more information than you required ;-)

Jason


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On Wed, 2006-07-26 at 17:17 +1200, Jason Haar wrote:

> Performance wise, video is great. However, I don't like the fan noise
> (hence my earlier question on sourcing fanless EPIA). They're not
> "noisy", but they are noticeable. However, I can't get the soundcard to
> work on it at the moment - I think it's a hardware problem as Knoppix
> boot-CD can't even successfully say the "Knoppix has finished booting"
> thing it does.

I've partly worked around the fan problem. I've stuck a 120mm case fan
directly above the motherboard. It works quite nicely at low speed,
until it stalls. Then things get very funky.

I need to drill some ventilation holes in the case, which should make
the situation a bit better.

--
Andrew Ruthven, Wellington, New Zealand
At home: andrew@etc.gen.nz | This space intentionally
| left blank.


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Steve Biddle wrote:

Hi guys... I've been lurking in this mailing list for several months and have played with several releases of Knoppmyth on my desktop PC but want to build up a dedicated PVR so I'm after a few tips. I don't want to build a huge system at this stage, I basically just want to build up a system to play around with and use to replace my VCR. Ideally I'd be after an ITX (or similair) based system in a small(ish) case with a single channel PVR150 and remote and a largeish HDD. Are any of the Via Mini ITX boards with onboard TV out any good with MythTV? Are these boards powerful enough to do a good job? What speed Via processor would I ideally need for a usable system or am I better looking at something else such as a P4/Celeron ITX board? Cheers _______________________________________________ mythtvnz mailing list mythtvnz@lists.linuxnut.co.nz http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/mythtvnz"]http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/mythtvnz Archives http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/mythtvnz/"]http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/mythtvnz/

Hi,

a friend and I are running Knoppmyth R5C7 on Via Epia M 12000 boards. I've got a PVR150 and he's got a PVR500 dual tuner. We've got 512MB Ram, HDD and DVD writer. I got the PVR150 that came with the remote that plugs into the back of the card - works perfectly fine with Knoppmyth. I also got a wireless RF keyboard, the BTC 9019URF which is great as it's got a mouse/joystick built in and is reasonably small. My case is a bit naff though as it's the simple Via case for ITX MoBos with a power supply. The trouble is that the power supply fan is rather loud so it's not really the quietest system. However, my friend has put his stuff into the Silverstone LC6 case that's got a passive power brick hence is a lot more silent. Interesting thing is that we tried to get his setup going under Windows MCE but it wouldn't work at all, apparently a directX incompatibility with the Via display driver. Also, SageTV worked but his CPU was constantly maxed out and navigating menus was very slow. However, under Linux, the setup just purrs away. We specifically went for the ITX boards since we wanted a system that would minimise power consumption as it's an "always on" setup. My power supply is 120W and his is around 80W.

All in all, these ITX boards can handle all the regular PVR tasks without trouble. I can comfortably have the tuner recording, while there is, say, a comflag process running in the background and watch a video. Of course, if you want to convert stuff to XviD or other, prepare for long transcoding times. Another limitation is the number of PCI slots, you usually get a single riser card so you can only stick the tuner card in there. If you want to have more than one tuner, best go with the PVR500 straight away.

HTH

-- "While I thought that I was learning to live, I have been learning how to die." Leonardo DaVinci _______________________________________________ mythtvnz mailing list mythtvnz@lists.linuxnut.co.nz http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/mythtvnz Archives http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/mythtvnz/

> I am currently experimenting with a loaner SP13000 with intent to buy. I
> am running "minimyth" which is a 90M MythTV distro(!!!). I'm running it
> diskless, via PXE-boot (and NFS) from a central server with 200G
> allocated diskspace. I'm running it over 100M Ethernet - but even over
> 802.11g wireless it works 99% of the time (wireless tends to be not as
> consistent as Ethernet - especially when your card decides it has to
> drop the Access Point and reconnect). In fact I've my wife (Mac), my
> laptop (FC4) and this minimyth frontend all going simultaneously ;-)

Jason - how do you cope with the drops on the wireless link. I've had a
couple of wireless machines where the link is regularly dropping and I
have to manually force a reconnect.

Steve


--------------------------------------------
OpenMedia Limited
sales - sales@openmedia.co.nz
support - support@openmedia.co.nz
website - http://www.openmedia.co.nz

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On 7/26/06, Steve Biddle <sjbiddle@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> Ideally I'd be after an ITX (or similair) based system in a small(ish) case with a single
> channel PVR150 and remote and a largeish HDD.

Do you have Sky? I found I started watching a lot more Sky once I got
Myth up and running so I'd definitely recommend an extra tuner/capture
card if you have Sky. In my case I'm running a DVB-S card (SkyStar2)
and a PVR150 for capturing Sky decoder output.

Steve

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Open Media Support wrote:
>> I am currently experimenting with a loaner SP13000 with intent to buy. I
>> am running "minimyth" which is a 90M MythTV distro(!!!). I'm running it
>> diskless, via PXE-boot (and NFS) from a central server with 200G
>> allocated diskspace. I'm running it over 100M Ethernet - but even over
>> 802.11g wireless it works 99% of the time (wireless tends to be not as
>> consistent as Ethernet - especially when your card decides it has to
>> drop the Access Point and reconnect). In fact I've my wife (Mac), my
>> laptop (FC4) and this minimyth frontend all going simultaneously ;-)
>>
>
> Jason - how do you cope with the drops on the wireless link. I've had a
> couple of wireless machines where the link is regularly dropping and I
> have to manually force a reconnect.
>
*** Jul 26 17:43:28 tnz-jhaar-lt kernel: ipw2200: Firmware error
detected. Restarting. ***

It just handles the issue itself. However, the network is "hung" while
it restarts. The Access Point shows similar events when this happens:

*** Jul 26 17:43:29 012858: %DOT11-6-DISASSOC: Interface Dot11Radio0,
Deauthenticating Station ***
*** Jul 26 17:43:32 012859: %DOT11-6-ASSOC: Interface Dot11Radio0,
Station associated ***

3 second outage. Probably a wireless driver-specific issue. After all,
there's native, madwifi, ipw2*, etc.

Jason



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> Hi guys... I've been lurking in this mailing list for several months and
> have
> played with several releases of Knoppmyth on my desktop PC but want to
> build up
> a dedicated PVR so I'm after a few tips.
>
> I don't want to build a huge system at this stage, I basically just want
> to
> build up a system to play around with and use to replace my VCR. Ideally
> I'd be
> after an ITX (or similair) based system in a small(ish) case with a single
> channel PVR150 and remote and a largeish HDD.
>
> Are any of the Via Mini ITX boards with onboard TV out any good with
> MythTV?
> Are these boards powerful enough to do a good job? What speed Via
> processor
> would I ideally need for a usable system or am I better looking at
> something
> else such as a P4/Celeron ITX board?

I'm using an Epia SP13000, with 512M RAM, in a diskless config with it
booting off my server box where I've got 600G of raid5 and 50G of raid1 to
provide a nice safe environment for my OS image (Gentoo), TV recordings,
audio files, pictures and videos.

On my 25" Panasonic TV I get a wee bit too much overscan but the picture
quality is great - at least as good as my dedicated DVD player. I mostly
use a Sky box coming into the the svideo input of a PVR150mce card (the
retail version with the really good USB remote) and I take the svideo out
of the m/b to the TV.

I consider it to be mature enough now that I'm going to sell the DVD
player, the VCR will move into the office and connect into the system via
an old WinTV (BT848) card (its only been used once this year!) and I'm
going to upgrade the TV to LCD and the stereo to a theatre system and try
and get the spdif output going.

I'm running latest SVN code (will be 0.20 in the next couple of weeks I
expect) and the new things like MythArchive are brilliant. Recommended!

The fan in the PSU on the case I have is a bit noisy - I'm going to try a
12v car type PSU and an extrnal brick so I only have to tackle the CPU fan
then (I'll try large and slow for that) but its only noticable when the
mute is active.


--
Robin Gilks





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>Hi guys... I've been lurking in this mailing list for several months and have
>played with several releases of Knoppmyth on my desktop PC but want
>to build up
>a dedicated PVR so I'm after a few tips.
>
>I don't want to build a huge system at this stage, I basically just want to
>build up a system to play around with and use to replace my VCR.
>Ideally I'd be
>after an ITX (or similair) based system in a small(ish) case with a single
>channel PVR150 and remote and a largeish HDD.
>
>Are any of the Via Mini ITX boards with onboard TV out any good with MythTV?
>Are these boards powerful enough to do a good job? What speed Via processor
>would I ideally need for a usable system or am I better looking at something
>else such as a P4/Celeron ITX board?
>
>
> Cheers
>

I don't know how it goes as a B/E but I've got a M10K running as a
pretty sweet F/E. Using the video out is fine, and when you enable
Via XvMC playback, processor usage drops considerably. I'm using one
of the Via Sereniti 2000 cases, and the fan in the PSU made quite a
din. I ripped out the whole unit and replaced it with a external
power brick and ATX DC-DC converter. The CPU fan is quite noisy as
well, but putting in a fan controller can help with that.

Definitely worth a try, and if it doesn't cut the mustard as a B/E
you can always make it into a F/E for another room...

- Wade

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> Open Media Support wrote:
>>> I am currently experimenting with a loaner SP13000 with intent to buy.
>>> I
>>> am running "minimyth" which is a 90M MythTV distro(!!!). I'm running it
>>> diskless, via PXE-boot (and NFS) from a central server with 200G
>>> allocated diskspace. I'm running it over 100M Ethernet - but even over
>>> 802.11g wireless it works 99% of the time (wireless tends to be not as
>>> consistent as Ethernet - especially when your card decides it has to
>>> drop the Access Point and reconnect). In fact I've my wife (Mac), my
>>> laptop (FC4) and this minimyth frontend all going simultaneously ;-)
>>>
>>
>> Jason - how do you cope with the drops on the wireless link. I've had a
>> couple of wireless machines where the link is regularly dropping and I
>> have to manually force a reconnect.
>>
> *** Jul 26 17:43:28 tnz-jhaar-lt kernel: ipw2200: Firmware error
> detected. Restarting. ***
>
> It just handles the issue itself. However, the network is "hung" while
> it restarts. The Access Point shows similar events when this happens:
>
> *** Jul 26 17:43:29 012858: %DOT11-6-DISASSOC: Interface Dot11Radio0,
> Deauthenticating Station ***
> *** Jul 26 17:43:32 012859: %DOT11-6-ASSOC: Interface Dot11Radio0,
> Station associated ***
>
> 3 second outage. Probably a wireless driver-specific issue. After all,
> there's native, madwifi, ipw2*, etc.

Need to find a better source of cards with native drivers. If you are
running ndiswrapper based cards its isn't as good at recovering.

Steve


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