Mythtv questions

[spintel]

I'm looking to setup a mythtv box in my living room and was wondering what some peoples systems specs are. I was looking to try and keep it low cost as much as possible; possibly just going for a barebones Shuttle box with 1gb ram, PVR-150, 160-250gb hdd, dvdrom and 128 video.

Also, what are you experiences with using it over Ubuntu? I was also looking intoKnoppMyth and some of those other autoinstalls.

[Aetherius]

Specs are:

Sempron 3000+ (1.6GHz~)
768MB DDR2
Nvidia GeForce 6200 256MB
Freecom USB-DVB Tuner
Sony Ericsson k800i acting as Bluetooth Remote

MythTV runs on a secondary X-session of the TV-out of the GeForce. Everything works great, even snes and megadrive roms.

Recent experiences though have made me believe that Freevo is a better option. Very easily customized using python. Elisa is better visually, but its very early in its development.

Aeth

[Titus A Duxass]

My lowest spec. model is:

AMD Duron 900mhz
256mb RAM
GeForce MX440
Some old motherboard (K7A??).

This cost me about 80€ plus case.

Works perfectly and when I compare it to the Highest spec.(3,0Ghz, 1gb Ram, etc.) I can see very lilttle difference.

[coxy]

I built my Myth box a couple of months ago and it has been really good so far!

The only problem with dists such as Knoppmyth is that the packages tend to be out of date and a little older. Mine is running on Kubuntu 6.10 but the guide I followed is for Ubuntu 6.10. Have a look at the Ubuntu wiki for some useful info:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV

I am in the UK and didn't want to plug a Sky or Cable box into the system, I just have 2 DVB (Free air digital) TV cards that I use. My setup is:



1 x Intel Pentium 4 650 3.4Ghz Socket 775 800mhz 2mb Cache
1 x Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATAII/300 8.5ms 7200RPM 16MB Cache
1 x Asus Nvidia 7300GS 256MB PCI-E
1 x Casecom KL-787 Black Midi-Tower Case - With 350W PSU
1 x Ebuyer 1GB DDR2 533MHz PC2-4200 240pin Extra Value Ram
1 x Logitech Cordless Desktop EX 110 - USB/PS2
1 x NEC AD-5170A-0B 18xDVD±RW DL Black - Bare Drive
1 x MSI 945P Neo3-F i945P Socket 775 SATA 8-channel audio ATX
2 x Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-t PCI Freeview Receiver


It totalled £387.85

I could have done it for much cheaper but decided I wanted a semi-decent processor, memory and disc space. I think if you really stretched it you could easily take £150 off my total.

[SishGupta]

In the case of a media center it may be beneficial to get a fairly decent/modern processor so that it is capable of HD recording and playback. I have had problems with any HD play back on old processors that didn't lack in clock speed, but in multimedia extensions because it was an old proc.

There are two ways you can spend when buying a pc low cost pc:
You can spend a little now and a little more every time you need something better.
Or you can spend a little more now and a little every time you need something later.
It all comes down to preference and how much money you have. If you ask me it is better to spend more at the start and have a strong base for a system, then you can make $100 dollar upgrades every 6 months to keep it handling like a pro.

[Dubstar_04]

I built my 2 mythbox's from an old pc's.

hardware is as follows:

mythbox 1:
Silverstone lascala lc 16 case
AMD sempron 3000+
512 mb ram - was 1gb but made no difference
2 x 300gb maxtor caviar hdd's
Nvidia 5200 128mb video card
3 x hauppauge nova-t-pci tuners
windows media centre remote (mceusb2)

mythbox 2:
Silverstone sugo sg01 case
Intel P4 2.0gb processor
512mb ram from above
1 x 120 western digital hdd
1 x 320 gb maxtor
Nvidia 5200 128mb video card
2 x hauppauge nova-t-pci tuners
windows media centre remote (mceusb2)

Theres is not much difference between performance in these systems, although mythbox one is a little faster on transcoding jobs.

I you may notice a pattern appearing when looking at hardware, video cards and tuners in particular.

Do your home work as i migrated from an array of windows based media centres (wmce2005, media portal, gbpvr) before trying mythtv and had 2 highend hauppauge hybrid hvr 1300 tuners, that caused nothing but problems with sound. i had one pinnacle pctv 310i tuner that only worked on analogue, and 2 x compre t 300s that worked but were shocking for reception!! when i sold all this gear and replaced them with the hauppauge nova pci cards and had no problems at all and i got the cards for an amazing £17.50 - £22.50 off ebay brand new!!

And i also had a high end 256mb ati video card that neverworked!!

So make sure you shop around and research before you purchase. If your trying to stick to a budget I would recommend staying with the generic hardware such as the common nvidia video card chipsets (5200 is a good choice), and most definatly stick with the connextant tunner chip sets, if in doubt consult the V4L wiki.

I built the 2nd box for my parents so i dont have a photo but i have attached a pic of my system allbeit a bad on as i stood on my camera last month!!

I just noticed the original post date!!

I hope this information has helps someone all the same!!

[awakatanka]

Have my main pc working with the pvr-500 ( same as 150 but has 2 tuners on it) it was a breeze to install with feisty, configure the settings in myth is a bid work (must be made more user friendly ) but it runs good, my laptop conets with it and i watch wireless tv with it and record with other tuner.

Early version it was hard to get it working with ubuntu but feisty was easy for me.