Mailing List Archive

At 10:53 AM 5/26/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>All,
>
>If these have been repeated before, my apologies. I checked the archives
>and couldn't scrounge up much. I'm building a new box just for MythTV.
>It looks fantastic and very promising. My questions to all of you
>follow:

I just built mine so hopefully I can offer some thoughts... cost was a
major focus area for me so I went fairly affordable...
I based my system around a Duron 1.1Ghz Proc and 256MB of RAM but I find I
could use a bit more Proc and I had to up the ram to 384MB (both back and
front end on this machine). For audio I disable the onboard sound and put
in an OEM SBLive card.

>.Is there an IR Receiver/Remote that you've had a great experience with?
>Is the remote that comes with the Sound Blaster Audigy a decent one for
>this task? If I use the PVR250 is that a nice speedy remote?

If you are going to get a PVR250 anyway, then I think you will find the PVR
250 remote does the job. It has a fair number of "extra" buttons so you
can cram almost all the features on to the remote. There is a bit of a
struggle between volume/nav buttons but someone has coded a way around that
or you can just use your amp/tv remote for volume (which is what I do as I
rarely change it anyway). The remote behaves like a completely normal
remote so I'm not sure what you mean by speedy? Interactions feel like a
regular TV remote to me.

>.I've read a lot in the archives about using a special serial cable to
>control a cable TV box or DirecTV box. I couldn't actually find anyone
>who's done this... If you have, does it work well? IE Fast Channel
>changing response times? Where can you find (purchase) it?

Can't help you here but this definitely comes up on the list all the
time. You may want to include info on what cable/sat box you are referring to.

>.Regarding the last question, does the PVR-250 work well w/this setup
>(DirecTV or Digital Cable)? Is there a lag in changing channels?

There is a small delay in changing channels due to the rebuffering that
takes place (I am on analog cable). I'm not sure if it is longer if you
are on digital cable or sat. I noticed this the first few days we had Myth
in the living room but now that we are used to it it is fairly transparent.

>.Svideo out on a TV card vs. VGA to TV adaptor?

I am using the cheapest NVidia card I could find - a GeForce2MX 64MB with
TV Out. It has well supported docs and drivers from NVidia. I have some
overscan (black bars around my image) issues that are minor - but for the
cost (~$40ish USD) it was worth it.


>PS I just noticed someone posted one of these while I was typing this
>up, I apologies for two newbie posts in one day!

I'm not sure which archives you were able to search but here is a link for
the ones with the more detailed interface:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/mailarc/gforum.cgi?do=search

-Jeff

Thank you for the answers,

You said you feel like you need a bit more processor power, the 1.1 ghz
is not enough w/the PVR-250? I was looking @ the XP 2100 or so...

Thanks!,
Daniel

-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net] On Behalf Of Jeff C
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 11:08 AM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Building a box for Mythtv/Question


At 10:53 AM 5/26/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>All,
>
>If these have been repeated before, my apologies. I checked the
archives
>and couldn't scrounge up much. I'm building a new box just for MythTV.
>It looks fantastic and very promising. My questions to all of you
>follow:

I just built mine so hopefully I can offer some thoughts... cost was a
major focus area for me so I went fairly affordable...
I based my system around a Duron 1.1Ghz Proc and 256MB of RAM but I find
I
could use a bit more Proc and I had to up the ram to 384MB (both back
and
front end on this machine). For audio I disable the onboard sound and
put
in an OEM SBLive card.

>.Is there an IR Receiver/Remote that you've had a great experience
with?
>Is the remote that comes with the Sound Blaster Audigy a decent one for
>this task? If I use the PVR250 is that a nice speedy remote?

If you are going to get a PVR250 anyway, then I think you will find the
PVR
250 remote does the job. It has a fair number of "extra" buttons so you

can cram almost all the features on to the remote. There is a bit of a
struggle between volume/nav buttons but someone has coded a way around
that
or you can just use your amp/tv remote for volume (which is what I do as
I
rarely change it anyway). The remote behaves like a completely normal
remote so I'm not sure what you mean by speedy? Interactions feel like
a
regular TV remote to me.

>.I've read a lot in the archives about using a special serial cable to
>control a cable TV box or DirecTV box. I couldn't actually find anyone
>who's done this... If you have, does it work well? IE Fast Channel
>changing response times? Where can you find (purchase) it?

Can't help you here but this definitely comes up on the list all the
time. You may want to include info on what cable/sat box you are
referring to.

>.Regarding the last question, does the PVR-250 work well w/this setup
>(DirecTV or Digital Cable)? Is there a lag in changing channels?

There is a small delay in changing channels due to the rebuffering that
takes place (I am on analog cable). I'm not sure if it is longer if you

are on digital cable or sat. I noticed this the first few days we had
Myth
in the living room but now that we are used to it it is fairly
transparent.

>.Svideo out on a TV card vs. VGA to TV adaptor?

I am using the cheapest NVidia card I could find - a GeForce2MX 64MB
with
TV Out. It has well supported docs and drivers from NVidia. I have
some
overscan (black bars around my image) issues that are minor - but for
the
cost (~$40ish USD) it was worth it.


>PS I just noticed someone posted one of these while I was typing this
>up, I apologies for two newbie posts in one day!

I'm not sure which archives you were able to search but here is a link
for
the ones with the more detailed interface:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/mailarc/gforum.cgi?do=search

-Jeff


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At 11:30 AM 5/26/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Thank you for the answers,
>
>You said you feel like you need a bit more processor power, the 1.1 ghz
>is not enough w/the PVR-250? I was looking @ the XP 2100 or so...

I am not a Linux power user or expert but here are my specs and then I'll
tell you about my system performance:

AMD Duron 1.1Ghz Proc
ECS K7S5APro Mobo
384 MB RAM
On board 10/100
USB Mouse/Serial Keyboard
16x Liteon Burner
MSI GeForce2MX 64MB TVOut
SBLive Sound
Onboard sound disable
PVR250 Encoder Card w/Remote
80Gig 5400 RPM Drive
RH9 with KDE as a desktop

The box is dedicated to Myth and is currently making noise in the living
room (definite buy the quietest PS and proc fan you can find).

The system works great for TV watching, and playback viewing. I get a very
slight jitter about 1-2 seconds in when I first select a channel but I
think that may just be a buffering issue. The only speed relate issue I
have, is when I have the EPG on screen from live TV, the live TV feed in
the corner will skip if I scroll at anything less than what I'll call
"walking" speed. If I try to flip full pages on the EPG at anything faster
than "walking" speed it jitters. I believe this is a processing
issue. That being said, people on the list are running much slower procs
(at least on front end only machines - mine does both) and I think they are
ok. I do not have enough background knowledge to really performance tune
things and the outstanding epg thing isn't a big thing for me so I'm ok
with it. If you want to include other tuners etc you may want more than
the proc I selected. That's my info FWIW, I'll let others on the list
weigh in.

-Jeff