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new system - MythTV - recommendations

F

f_kruegar

Gawd
Joined
Jan 15, 2001
Messages
702
ok.. i was thinking of building a system for MythTV.. i wanted to know if any of you guys run it i have read tons of stuff but everyone and their brother say 1ghz will run it fine.. etc.. i know i am getting a wintv pvr-250 capture card.. seems that runs great in linux.. i was thinking of building small system.. with xp3300 and 1gb mem just to have enough mem in case i want to do anything else.. do any of you guys run mythtv box and if so what do you recommend.. also.. any place you recommend to buy cpu/mb/mem combo or maybe barebonez system where i dont have to spend a lot of $ to do this..

also any deals on pvr-250?

thanks in advance.. like always you guys rock.
 
f_kruegar said:
ok.. i was thinking of building a system for MythTV.. i wanted to know if any of you guys run it i have read tons of stuff but everyone and their brother say 1ghz will run it fine.. etc.. i know i am getting a wintv pvr-250 capture card.. seems that runs great in linux.. i was thinking of building small system.. with xp3300 and 1gb mem just to have enough mem in case i want to do anything else.. do any of you guys run mythtv box and if so what do you recommend.. also.. any place you recommend to buy cpu/mb/mem combo or maybe barebonez system where i dont have to spend a lot of $ to do this..

also any deals on pvr-250?

thanks in advance.. like always you guys rock.
Click to expand...

the pvr-250 will work fine. However if you want to playback HD video you might want to think about getting at least an AMD64 3000, or 3200... Also you might want to give KnoppMyth a try, and play around with it. When I setup my mythbox Knoppmyth was pretty nice, the setup is nice and fast..
 
I'm running MythTV on my old AthlonXP 1800+ (1533MHz) with 512MB of memory. It runs just fine. My only complaint is that the ATI video card I just happened to have absolutely sucks ass for TV output.

Even if you have to spend $50 or $100, get an nVidia card if you're running Myth and aren't using the DVI or VGA output. I used an FX5200 in the same box for a little while, and the output was MUCH better, even using S Video.
 
I ran mythtv on an old 2100+ athlon and it worked fine even with auto transcoding enabled. I'm sure if you aren't transcoding a 1ghz will be fine -- the pvr takes the brunt of the work. I would agree with other posts and also recommend that you get a 150 and NOT a 250. The 150 is better supported.

This summer I upgraded my system and am enjoying the extra speed. I got a 3200+ 939, 1gb corsair value stuff (2x512) and i'm thinking about getting another 2 sticks. The commercial flagging and transcoding is super fast now.

But if you just want to put together a cheap system, I see no reason why you couldn't squeeze by with 1ghz. Of course, no transcoding means you need to make up for that with extra hard drive space to get X hours of recorded shows saved. With all the price drops I would really recommend that you just save up a little more and get a nice (newish) 939 system.
 
Definitely go with nvidia video. Under linux the experience is just much smoother than with ATI. The TV output is much better too. I migrated from a radeon 9800 to an FX5200 on my older system because of it.
 
I second Kleptophobiac's comments about capture cards and graphics cards.

The PVR250's functionality is fully replicated by the 150 in any recent version of ivtv drivers... no need to worry about support. The 150 can be found cheaper and easier than the 250.

Really, there's not much of a choice when it comes to modern graphics cards under linux. Sure, ATI publishes a driver that will probabbly allow you to do some CAD work, and you can probabbly get X to run, but it just doesn't cut it for the type of image processing that you can do with even a cheap nvidia card. The type of image processing in question: XvMC.

The XP3300 and 1Gb of RAM you have allocated for this system should be *more* than enough to handle this task with ease if you're just doing regular SD television. The BIGGEST upgrade you will find yourself doing to your HTPC in the future is storage space. Think about it now so that you're ready when your disks are full.

Good Luck. Let me know if you have any setup questions... I'll be happy to help.

-q
 
man.. THANKS for the info I knew you guys would help me.. ok.. so .. i should get the pvr-150 instead of the 250.. what is the difference then? also.. what is a good / cheap nvidia card that I can get to get by with this setup.. i wont be playing games on it.. it will be specifically a MythTV box...

I did d/l knoppmyth and i havent run it on my box yet.. but i will soon enough.. i use knoppix to test computers sometimes.. :) so this should be fun..

any and all information is greatly appreciated..
 
The nvidia 6200 is currently the darling of the HTPC crowd. It handles HD pretty well, does component out (depending on model), and nvidia has better linux driver support than ATI.

The PVR-150 is a cost reduced version of the PVR-250. It has a smaller circuit board and puts off less heat. It uses a slightly more modern chipset. All in all, it's just a newer, better product that costs less.
 
actually the major difference between the 150 and the 250 is that the 250 has hardware VCD encoding while the 150 does not
 
ok.. checked out newegg.. i think this is what imma get

BIOSTAR TFORCE4 AM2 Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard
Rosewill R103A Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 350W Power Supply
LITE-ON 16X DVD±R DVD Burner W/ LightScribe
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB HDD
Patriot eXtreme Performance 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
AMD Athlon 64 3200
Hauppauge 1062 PCI Interface WinTV-PVR-150 MCE Kit Tuner Card

what you guys think? will the onboard video be ok?
any other deals out there this is about 525$

also.. the pvr-150 doesnt have hardware coding?
 
f_kruegar said:
ok.. checked out newegg.. i think this is what imma get

BIOSTAR TFORCE4 AM2 Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard
...
what you guys think? will the onboard video be ok?
Click to expand...

That board, if I'm looking at the right one, doesn't have onboard video:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138028

You would have to get a pci-e video card to go with it. If you're looking for suggestions, a 7600GT would be the best bet right now for a linux box.
(Shamelessly stolen from another thread)
http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html#geforce

The inverse telecine is (in my opinion) going to be a very welcome addition to your dvd-viewing pleasure, and I'm considering an upgrade myself. Why the hype?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine

Just my $.02.

If you're looking for a board with onboard graphics that will "get the job done" for non-hd content, the 6150 chipset from nividia could be very appealing. I have heard that the 6100 struggles a bit with higher resolutions, but have no relavant links offhand. You can try digging through other's experiences:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=mythtv+nvidia+6100&btnG=Search

Good luck
-q
 
yah i accidently had the wrong motherboard on there.. this is the one i think imma go with.

BIOSTAR TForce 6100 AM2 Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

it has the 6100 on board.. i think that would be good enough like you said unless i do higher resolutions which i prob wont do anytime soon..

thanks for the info
 
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