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First Draft Mythbuntu Build

M

Moericus

n00b
Joined
Jul 14, 2005
Messages
24
I'm looking to build a fairly simple HTPC/Media Server for my theater setup. I want to use Mythbuntu for the OS/software. I also have a hd pvr for recording.

My research led me to this build:
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 AMD 770 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard Link
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 250 Regor 3.0GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Processor ADX250OCGQBOX Link
Video Card: POWERCOLOR Go! Green AX5450 512MK3-SH Radeon HD 5450 (Cedar) 512MB 64-bit DDR3 HDCP Ready Video Card Link
RAM: Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Link
HDD(Media/RAID): SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Link
HDD(OS): OCZ Solid2 OCZSSD2-2SLD30G 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive Link

I'm probably recycling an Antec case and DVD-RW drive. I have a PS3 for bluray, and a Onkyo TrueHD receiver for audio. Eventually I'll build a separate Media server. This is my second ubuntu build and my first htpc build.

Do you think this hardware is compatible?
 
HTPC wise it looks pretty solid, couldn't tell you for Mythbuntu though. I haven't messed with MythTV or Ubuntu in a good 5 or 6 years.
 
Unfortunately, ATI/AMD video cards are not recommended for Linux as the offloading of HD content do not work whatsoever with Linux. As such, your best bet for compatibility and playback is a Nvidia card. Specifically the GT 210 cards.

Also, I don't see any PSU in that list. What PSU will you be using?
 
I see your point. I've been researching the Nvidia cards, but I'm having trouble finding one that clearly states on board TrueHD Audio. I'd like the best digital audio signal sent to my Onkyo receiver. Also, I see many cards for 210 but none at newegg that are 'GT 210'.

Hard to beat the price of this nvidia card today:
EVGA 512-P3-1213-LR GeForce 210 512MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card Link

It's a 500W inside my Antec case at the moment.
Link
 
Can one encode to 7.1 LPCM audio? That works on both Nvidia and ATI cards.
 
Moericus said:
I see your point. I've been researching the Nvidia cards, but I'm having trouble finding one that clearly states on board TrueHD Audio. I'd like the best digital audio signal sent to my Onkyo receiver. Also, I see many cards for 210 but none at newegg that are 'GT 210'.

Hard to beat the price of this nvidia card today:
EVGA 512-P3-1213-LR GeForce 210 512MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card Link

It's a 500W inside my Antec case at the moment.
Link
Click to expand...

AFAIK, no Nvidia card actually supports TrueHD audio or bitstreamed audio. The best they can do now is 7.1 LPCM audio as Zachstar said.

The cards are also known as GeForce 210 as well.

Which Sonata do you have? II or III? II came with a crap PSU by now and the III came with a very solid PSU.
 
Oh well, I guess I'll have to sacrifice on something. Thank you for your help.

I have a Sonata 3 case with the stock 500W PSU.
 
Danny Bui said:
The best they can do now is 7.1 LPCM audio as Zachstar said.
Click to expand...
This makes it sound like that's some kind of detrimental thing. The PCM coding supported by HDMI and I assume nVidia cards supports 8 channels of 24-bit/192KHz audio, which is the same depth and sample rate that TrueHD (losslessly) codes. It's equivalent in every way (TrueHD streams outside of BluRay can have more than 8 channels, but I don't think we're talking about that), except it's uncompressed. There's no sound quality or functionality degredation, it just means your PC is decoding the stream instead of the receiver.

Support fairly recently hit Linux though, so you may need to do some kernel module compiling to get native HDMI output working. I'm not sure if it's in Ubuntu yet or not. Looks like support landed in the most recent version of ALSA, 1.0.23. My Ubuntu HTPC that I just updated today is still on 1.0.21 so you will probably have to do this manually. GT210 would be a good choice.
 
Update:
I assembled it this past weekend with the original setup I posted. I decided to use Windows 7 Pro with MCE for audio quality purposes. Win 7 also picked up HD PVR support so I think I'll be fine.

The system is fast and stable with the original drivers. This week i will connect it to the internet for updates. Next week I will start incorporating my HD PVR.

Thanks for all of your help.
 
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