Mailing List Archive

Where are you getting your case from? Also what Satellite receiver are you
thinking of getting. I have read about RCA and Sony working with the Low Speed
Data Port but no other one as of yet.

Mike

--

"Windows hasn't increased computer literacy. It's just lowered the
standard."

---------- Original Message -----------
From: "Daniel Jimenez" <mythtv@cuban.cc>
To: <mythtv-users@snowman.net>
Sent: Tue, 27 May 2003 16:18:54 -0500
Subject: [mythtv-users] Box I'm building

> All,
>
> Sorry for the flood of emails, I'm very excited about MythTV and cannot
> wait to get started. Here is the box I'm building, could anyone comment
> on it? (This will be front end and back end)
>
> AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (333)
> 512 MB PC2700 Elixar Ram
> ABIT AT7-MAX 2
> Serial ATA 150 Segate Baracuda IV 80GB HDD
> Happauge WinTV PVR-250
> Antec Sonata Quiet Case
>
> Will be getting DirecTV w/low speed serial port (I hope that XML TV has
> no issues getting DirecTV listings).
>
> Haven't decided on wireless or cabled yet...
>
> Thanks,
> Daniel Jimenez
------- End of Original Message -------

Daniel Jimenez wrote:
> All, Sorry for the flood of emails, I'm very excited about MythTV and
> cannot wait to get started. Here is the box I'm building, could anyone
> comment on it? (This will be front end and back end) AMD Athlon XP
> 2500+ (333) 512 MB PC2700 Elixar Ram ABIT AT7-MAX 2 Serial ATA 150
> Segate Baracuda IV 80GB HDD Happauge WinTV PVR-250 Antec Sonata Quiet
> Case Will be getting DirecTV w/low speed serial port (I hope that XML
> TV has no issues getting DirecTV listings). Haven't decided on
> wireless or cabled yet... Thanks, Daniel Jimenez

With that kind of CPU power, you could save a few bucks and use a bttv
tuner - you'll have so much cpu left that the PVR-250 won't help much,
if at all.


Pete

> Daniel Jimenez wrote:
> > All, Sorry for the flood of emails, I'm very excited about MythTV and
> > cannot wait to get started. Here is the box I'm building, could anyone
> > comment on it? (This will be front end and back end) AMD Athlon XP
> > 2500+ (333) 512 MB PC2700 Elixar Ram ABIT AT7-MAX 2 Serial ATA 150
> > Segate Baracuda IV 80GB HDD Happauge WinTV PVR-250 Antec Sonata Quiet
> > Case Will be getting DirecTV w/low speed serial port (I hope that XML
> > TV has no issues getting DirecTV listings). Haven't decided on
> > wireless or cabled yet... Thanks, Daniel Jimenez
>
> With that kind of CPU power, you could save a few bucks and use a bttv
> tuner - you'll have so much cpu left that the PVR-250 won't help much,
> if at all.
>

And spend it on some more drive space. Where I live, the sweet spot for IDE
drives is 120GB these days. Do you really need serial ATA?

If course if money's no object...

At 08:38 PM 5/27/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Daniel Jimenez wrote:
>>All, Sorry for the flood of emails, I'm very excited about MythTV and
>>cannot wait to get started. Here is the box I'm building, could anyone
>>comment on it? (This will be front end and back end) AMD Athlon XP
>>2500+ (333) 512 MB PC2700 Elixar Ram ABIT AT7-MAX 2 Serial ATA 150 Segate
>>Baracuda IV 80GB HDD Happauge WinTV PVR-250 Antec Sonata Quiet
>>Case Will be getting DirecTV w/low speed serial port (I hope that XML
>>TV has no issues getting DirecTV listings). Haven't decided on wireless
>>or cabled yet... Thanks, Daniel Jimenez
>
>With that kind of CPU power, you could save a few bucks and use a bttv
>tuner - you'll have so much cpu left that the PVR-250 won't help much, if
>at all.

Pete you raise an interesting point and one I have been pondering for a
while. While processor prices so low, and PVR250 cards a bit on the
expensive side, I'm thinking that it is probably cheaper to go with a
low-end tuner card and more proc than go splurge for the 250. In my neck
of the woods a 250 goes for almost CAD$250 but a Duron 1.1Ghz starts at
about CAD$60 and even much more fire power is only $120 ish....

I am happy with my 250 setup and it works well but I am going to likely be
building a few boxes for friends and would like to go with a more basic
tuner card instead and more proc. What do people recommend for a tuner
card that also supports audio off the PCI bus of the tuner (I've read
enough audio in messages to know that PCI audio seems to be the way to
go)?. The ATI Tuner card is popular in this neck of the woods but the low
end one doesnt seem to suport stereo. What are price points on popular
tuner options?

-Jeff

I grabbed my 2500 XP for 99 bucks, so why it's such a high end
processor.

My only idea w/serial ATA was HDD speed. Serial ATA will be quite a bit
faster, my question is... Will this be a huge difference? Should I spend
the money on more space?

Daniel

-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net] On Behalf Of Jeff C
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:56 PM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Box I'm building


At 08:38 PM 5/27/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Daniel Jimenez wrote:
>>All, Sorry for the flood of emails, I'm very excited about MythTV
and
>>cannot wait to get started. Here is the box I'm building, could anyone

>>comment on it? (This will be front end and back end) AMD Athlon XP
>>2500+ (333) 512 MB PC2700 Elixar Ram ABIT AT7-MAX 2 Serial ATA 150
Segate
>>Baracuda IV 80GB HDD Happauge WinTV PVR-250 Antec Sonata Quiet
>>Case Will be getting DirecTV w/low speed serial port (I hope that
XML
>>TV has no issues getting DirecTV listings). Haven't decided on
wireless
>>or cabled yet... Thanks, Daniel Jimenez
>
>With that kind of CPU power, you could save a few bucks and use a bttv
>tuner - you'll have so much cpu left that the PVR-250 won't help much,
if
>at all.

Pete you raise an interesting point and one I have been pondering for a
while. While processor prices so low, and PVR250 cards a bit on the
expensive side, I'm thinking that it is probably cheaper to go with a
low-end tuner card and more proc than go splurge for the 250. In my
neck
of the woods a 250 goes for almost CAD$250 but a Duron 1.1Ghz starts at
about CAD$60 and even much more fire power is only $120 ish....

I am happy with my 250 setup and it works well but I am going to likely
be
building a few boxes for friends and would like to go with a more basic
tuner card instead and more proc. What do people recommend for a tuner
card that also supports audio off the PCI bus of the tuner (I've read
enough audio in messages to know that PCI audio seems to be the way to
go)?. The ATI Tuner card is popular in this neck of the woods but the
low
end one doesnt seem to suport stereo. What are price points on popular
tuner options?

-Jeff


_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@snowman.net
http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

At 12:02 AM 5/28/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>I grabbed my 2500 XP for 99 bucks, so why it's such a high end
>processor.
>
>My only idea w/serial ATA was HDD speed. Serial ATA will be quite a bit
>faster, my question is... Will this be a huge difference? Should I spend
>the money on more space?

I have an 80GB and after a week of use would already love ot have a
160. More space is better... but I'm also using a PVR 250 so my files are
bigger than they need to be...

-Jeff

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> but I'm also using a PVR 250 so my files are bigger than they need
> to be...

You can adjust the bitrate. Look at the HOWTO and read up on the
test_ioctl program in the ivtv package.

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Hash: SHA1

> My only idea w/serial ATA was HDD speed. Serial ATA will be
> quite a bit faster, my question is... Will this be a huge
> difference? Should I spend the money on more space?

Did you read in the HOWTO how it discussed various hardware
requirements? Any modern harddrive using DMA will have more than
adequate performance with MythTV. Even the PVR-250 going at full
tilt is only producing 16 mega _bits_ per second; hard drive transfer
speed is measured in mega _bytes_ per second.

Get more drive space versus faster drive space unless you're feeding
lots and lots of frontends from one master backend.

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Daniel Jimenez wrote:
> I grabbed my 2500 XP for 99 bucks, so why it's such a high end
> processor.

I find that very fast, since I can get by without too much troubles with
a simple Celeron 1.1Ghz... but with the 2500+ you could use _two_ bttv
tuners if/when you want to, without problems.

It's not a "high-end" processor anymore, but it really isn't slow either :)


Pete

On Wed, 2003-05-28 at 00:02, Daniel Jimenez wrote:
> I grabbed my 2500 XP for 99 bucks, so why it's such a high end
> processor.
>
> My only idea w/serial ATA was HDD speed. Serial ATA will be quite a bit
> faster, my question is... Will this be a huge difference? Should I spend
> the money on more space?
>
> Daniel

Speed is not what you need for MythTV, not really anyway. Think about
it... how fast a drive do you need to write a 2GB file in 1 hour?
That's something like 582KB/sec. With any relatively modern drive you
can easily get 10MB/sec or more. Still, if you are writing two files
and reading back two more, seek time will be important.

I think the most important qualities a HD for MythTV has are:

Size
Noise
Seek Time
Throughput

So, IMHO, spend your money on big cheap ATA133 or ATA100 drives.







> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net] On Behalf Of Jeff C
> Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:56 PM
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Box I'm building
>
>
> At 08:38 PM 5/27/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> >Daniel Jimenez wrote:
> >>All, Sorry for the flood of emails, I'm very excited about MythTV
> and
> >>cannot wait to get started. Here is the box I'm building, could anyone
>
> >>comment on it? (This will be front end and back end) AMD Athlon XP
> >>2500+ (333) 512 MB PC2700 Elixar Ram ABIT AT7-MAX 2 Serial ATA 150
> Segate
> >>Baracuda IV 80GB HDD Happauge WinTV PVR-250 Antec Sonata Quiet
> >>Case Will be getting DirecTV w/low speed serial port (I hope that
> XML
> >>TV has no issues getting DirecTV listings). Haven't decided on
> wireless
> >>or cabled yet... Thanks, Daniel Jimenez
> >
> >With that kind of CPU power, you could save a few bucks and use a bttv
> >tuner - you'll have so much cpu left that the PVR-250 won't help much,
> if
> >at all.
>
> Pete you raise an interesting point and one I have been pondering for a
> while. While processor prices so low, and PVR250 cards a bit on the
> expensive side, I'm thinking that it is probably cheaper to go with a
> low-end tuner card and more proc than go splurge for the 250. In my
> neck
> of the woods a 250 goes for almost CAD$250 but a Duron 1.1Ghz starts at
> about CAD$60 and even much more fire power is only $120 ish....
>
> I am happy with my 250 setup and it works well but I am going to likely
> be
> building a few boxes for friends and would like to go with a more basic
> tuner card instead and more proc. What do people recommend for a tuner
> card that also supports audio off the PCI bus of the tuner (I've read
> enough audio in messages to know that PCI audio seems to be the way to
> go)?. The ATI Tuner card is popular in this neck of the woods but the
> low
> end one doesnt seem to suport stereo. What are price points on popular
> tuner options?
>
> -Jeff
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
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