> - How much is silence in your living room worth? Rather a lot, a 200 kw turbogenerator is stone silent comapared to my 6-yar old, so...
> - Do you (and other family members) want an "ugly" old computer > showcased in your living room? No, so I have it behind the wall unit and use an RF keyboard and mouse. > - How much did you spend on audio/video gear in the past? Not a whole lot, though it seemed a bunch at the time (older gear, but it suits our purposes). > - How much money do you normally spend on your computer hobby? As little as possible. I have other hobbies, as well. > - How many hours of recordings do you want to keep? (HINT: it's more > than you would ever think when your building your first mythtv box) Yes it is, but I archive off to DVD anything we deem worth keeping longer than one viewing. > - When one of your hard drives fails and you lose your > system/recordings, how much would it be worth to you to be able to go > back in time and set up RAID? Not a thing. I backup my system drive whenever I do an upgrade (both before and after) and the /video directory (on it's own drive) can go "poof" for all I care, I'm only out the cost of a replacement drive. What did I spend? Combined Frontend/Backend SD $36 - DVD Burner $25 - 40 Gig HD (eBay) $75 - PVR-150 (eBay) $9 - Case and PS $7 - homebrew speed control circuit for PS fan $20 - RF wireless Keyboard & Mouse everything else (700 mhz Pentium III, MB, 640MB ram, 20 Gig system drive) I had lying around the house. Cables to hook it all together (I splurged here) $45 Total: about $220 Like most things, the key to a satisfactory purchase is to know what you want to do, and shop carefully and patiently. Chris K. _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users