Re: [SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
John Clarke wrote: On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 02:05:37AM +1100, Jake Anderson wrote: Jake, Thanks for your input, much appreciated. No worries, you probably want a silverstone case. They have some nice ones. They have some ugly ones too :-) I was thinking of buying an LC10-E. I think I have the lc17, was one of the first ones they came out with I think I'm pretty sure I can do what I want, but I don't know whether I'll be able to do audio over HDMI or whether I'll need to use analogue audio for the TV. It doesn't matter; if I want good quality sound I'm not going to use the speakers in the TV. Many audio amps that have hdmi ports don't actually decode the audio on the hdmi channel, just something to be wary of. If you want quiet, ditch the mbo, cpu and separate video card. the new myth out uses vdpau to accelerate video on anything that supports it ( nvidia 9300 or so) The card I'd picked, the GT220, supports VDPAU (VP4 including MPEG-4 decoding), but I'll have another look at motherboards and see if I can find one with suitable graphics on-board. Yeah it's probably overkill though and in my experince video card fans make loads of noise relative to their size. I have a quad core q6600 in it but I'd put one of the newer quad cores in it now but its also my everything server (it has 6gb of ram and is This is going to be running MythTV only, so I figured a dual core would be enough. should be, My dads TV was (until a few days ago) a P4 3Ghz with no vdpau. Although if you want to run commercial flagging while recording you will probably want one cpu per channel. We can live without that. We're used to skipping ads manually, so as long as I can configure a 30-sec skip button on the remote, it'll be fine. Only major upside to it is reduced disk load as it can commflag it can do it without writing it to disk again. Look also at tweaking the file system options so it'll use like 256mb blocks, its not actually a block size of 256mb but you tell the FS that it'll have big files on it on average and if your streaming 2 files onto the one disk it'll help to stop it from getting really fragmented. Wikipedia says that the GT220 is more powerful than the 9400, so it might be able to handle it. There's also the GT240 (rumoured to be coming soon), which has even more grunt. I'm fairly finiky about it but it all looks good enough to me. Too much CPU is barely enough :-) heh, If your going to do transcoding that's pretty true, again quad core will get you the performace for the price and thermal more than faster dual cores ;- Add another hdd or 2 because myth can use storage pools to reduce the seek load when recording and playing multiple streams and drives are so cheap these days. More drives == more noise though, so if I do add more drives, maybe I should configure a remote back-end? The machine I'd do that on would then need some drives replacing because all of its SATA ports are in use, and there's not enough free space to store much TV. HDD's are pretty silent unless they are super fast to my ear. A 5400RPM drive makes almost no noise next to the 15Krpm seagate cheetah I just put into the missus PC ;- Having the multiple pools will reduce the amount of disk seeking you need to do and seeks are pretty noisy. Also you can usually tweak the hdd's noise settings and put them into quiet mode where I believe they slow down the seeks so they make less noise. I'd investigate the possibility of sticking / on a USB stick perhaps so that the spinning disks can shut down. I'd thought of that too, but I'll get it up and running on a hard drive first and see how much noise it makes. Our analogue hard drive recorder is barely audible with the cabinet door closed. We can hear the drive heads moving sometimes, but only when editing or deleting content. It's damn near silent (apart from the cooling fans) when playing or recording. My feeling is that provided the thing isnt actually loud a little bit of noise is ok, you can't hear it anyway when the TV is on ;- I use a shintaro http://www.shintaro.com.au/products/peripherals/14SH-KEYREMOTE/index.htm I like the little Logitech diNovo Mini. Small is good. I looked at that, I was going to get one but they were like $240 Vs the shintaros $100. BTW the shintaro can be recovered from having a bowl of stroganoff dumped into it (If your interested). I won't need to be any more than a few metres away, especially if I can use the IR remote for most things. I tried to get the IR remote to work, but by the time it got close I was used to the keyboard ;- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
I have never used nor affiliated with them but someone pointed me their way when I was thinking about a mythtv box and was worried about months of hardware research/cross checking/pricing etc There is a open platform called Dragon http://mythic.tv/index.php/dragon-v2-0.html and a company in Aus that sell them http://www.better-access.com/index.php?dest=order Grant John Clarke wrote: Greetings Sluggers, I'm planning to build a MythTV box have come up with what I think is suitable hardware to run it on, but I'm hoping that those of you with MythTV experience will point out anything I've got wrong. The box will be both back and front end and will be in the lounge room in the cabinet with the amps, dvd player, etc, so it'll need to be fairly quiet, especially when idle, but I don't want to hear much when it's running either. It's going to be inside a cabinet so doesn't have to be stunningly beautiful, but I don't want it to look spectacularly ugly either. My budget is $2000. I want HDMI video to the TV (LCD, 1080p), either with audio or with a separate analogue audio cable. I also want digital audio (S/PDIF, preferrably coax) to the amp for better quality stereo or 5.1 audio. I'd also like the option of watching either live TV, recorded programs or ripped DVDs on any other PC on the LAN, at the same time as a different program is being watched on the TV and maybe another is being recorded. I believe that all of the hardware I'm thinking of is supported by Linux and MythTV, and although I don't think the necessary drivers are packaged in any distro yet (I'm thinking of using the latest Mythbuntu, only because everything else is running Ubuntu), I do know where to get them. This is my list of hardware: Asus P5Q SE2 motherboard Intel Core2Duo E7600 3.06GHz 1066MHz FSB 2GB PC6400 DDR2 RAM Asus GeForce GT220 1GB DDR3 video card 1.5GB Seagate 7200 RPM SATA HDD (ST31500341AS) Lite-On SATA 240x8 DVD-RW drive Silverstone LC10-E case 500W power supply Logitech diNovo Mini bluetooth keyboard and either of: Hauppage Nova-T-500 MCE dual tuner (PCI) Hauppage 2200 MCE dual tuner (PCI-E) I'll probably add a second tuner card once I've got it all up and running. We have occasionally wished for a third tuner in the past (not often, there's not that much worth watching on TV), so I may as well have four, just in case :-) Is this hardware powerful enough to do all that I want? Do I need more CPU grunt? More RAM? More hard drives? Bigger PSU? Anything else? The only other thing I can think of is remote control. I'd like to be able to control it from my Logitech Harmnony One remote, at least for the most common tasks, so obviously I'll need some sort of IR receiver. From what I've read, the USB IrDA dongle I have is unlikely to work, so I'll need something else. All I've been able to find are receivers bundled with remote handsets, but I already have half a dozen or so of those gathering dust and don't need to add another one to the collection. Advice and suggestions will be gratefully received. I'd like to order the hardware next week, and I'd appreciate knowing that I've chosen badly *before* I part with the money :-) Thanks, John -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 11:34:57PM +1100, Jake Anderson wrote: Hi Jake, Many audio amps that have hdmi ports don't actually decode the audio on the hdmi channel, just something to be wary of. Thanks, but the HDMI is for the TV, and it does support audio over HDMI. I'll be using S/PDIF for audio to the amp. Too much CPU is barely enough :-) heh, If your going to do transcoding that's pretty true, again quad core will get you the performace for the price and thermal more than faster dual cores ;- True, but even with a dual core it's going to be the most powerful computer in the house :-) BTW the shintaro can be recovered from having a bowl of stroganoff dumped into it (If your interested). Each to his own. I'd rather each my dinner than pour it onto my keyboard. Cheers, John -- Some of us only count in octal. So how come there was a PDP8 ? Dunno, but it thinks it's a PDP-10. -- Charlie Gibbs -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
On Monday 16 November 2009 09:00:05 slug-requ...@slug.org.au wrote: a) I'd run back and front end of different machines I'd thought of doing that, but because the TV and aerial cable are in the same room, I'd still have to make this machine both fron and back end, so I don't see any great benefit in having a remote back end. Except that you don't want to power up your machine every time you want to check ABC's Finance is set to record weekly, your daughter phones and asks you to record friends or you just want to check that motoGP has higher priority than conflicts and IMHO the EPG is adequate and tracks their sometimes quickly changing schedules EG myth scheduled to record FavoriteProgram on 7 at 19:30. Seven reschedules for 19:32 myth wakes up at 19:29 finds Not scheduled for 19:30 and goes to sleep and does not record at 19:32 !! These are real, not thought experiments. Add another hdd or 2 because myth can use storage pools to reduce the seek load when recording and playing multiple streams and drives are so cheap these days. More drives == more noise though, so if I do add more drives, maybe I should configure a remote back-end? The machine I'd do that on would then need some drives replacing because all of its SATA ports are in use, and there's not enough free space to store much TV. And Seagate's 'SCSI vs ATA more than just an interface' which claims the failure rate of a multiple disk system is much higher than 1 disk ... Disk1 seeks and knocks Disk2 off track ... So Disk2 seeks and knocks Disk1 off track ... The card I'd picked, the GT220, supports VDPAU (VP4 including MPEG-4 decoding), but I'll have another look at motherboards and see if I can find one with suitable graphics on-board. Side by side I compare 2 AMD dual core machines with VDPAU enabled on 1 (8600) and motor racing or footie and I see no difference to my OnBoard ASUS graphics. James -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
John Clarke wrote: True, but even with a dual core it's going to be the most powerful computer in the house :-) I use a dual-core machine without any major issue. I find it's not so much the ad skipping, but the transcoding that takes all the CPU time. If you're not intending to transcode then that isn't an issue. BTW the shintaro can be recovered from having a bowl of stroganoff dumped into it (If your interested). Each to his own. I'd rather each my dinner than pour it onto my keyboard. I use a Shintaro, similar to Jakes. For Myth alone it doesn't add much value, but we also use our Lounge Room TV for Web Browsing/YouTube/iView etc. and the keyboard really comes into it's own then. It's also good for the occasional annihilation of aliens or insane bombing of helpless villagers in MythGames. fwiw I've had pretty good success with USB tuners. I've been through five different PCI-based tuner cards over the last few years, they seem to reliably fail for me. I've found they get very hot and I'm guessing that 24x7 usage in a hot box is more than they can handle. The KWorld 399U USB dual-DVB tuner I use now seems to be powering along just nicely, latest MythBuntu supports it out of the box, and it's by far the cheapest solution I've found. Terry -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
Not MythTV but may be of interest anyway How to Build a High Definition HTPC for $500 (using XBMC) http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/2810841 Bill -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
RE: [SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
Greetings John Here is a business idea Once you have these questions answered, why not create a Letter to Santa in which you could advertise the benefits of such a package... It could interest a few people, I think. Then, yourself or another one of Santa's helpers could install, ready to be delivered on time on the special day. (If it fits in the cabinet, it should fit in the sleigh). About the invoice? It would be bad taste to leave it under the Christmas tree... Ask Santa to leave it with the prawns in the fridge. Best wishes. IrmaB PS: Thank you for writing your request to the list in such a funny tone, it allowed me to flip to the not so serious side for a moment.! -Original Message- From: slug-boun...@slug.org.au [mailto:slug-boun...@slug.org.au] On Behalf Of Grant Street Sent: Monday, 16 November 2009 11:41 AM To: SLUG Subject: Re: [SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought I have never used nor affiliated with them but someone pointed me their way when I was thinking about a mythtv box and was worried about months of hardware research/cross checking/pricing etc There is a open platform called Dragon http://mythic.tv/index.php/dragon-v2-0.html and a company in Aus that sell them http://www.better-access.com/index.php?dest=order Grant John Clarke wrote: Greetings Sluggers, I'm planning to build a MythTV box have come up with what I think is suitable hardware to run it on, but I'm hoping that those of you with MythTV experience will point out anything I've got wrong. The box will be both back and front end and will be in the lounge room in the cabinet with the amps, dvd player, etc, so it'll need to be fairly quiet, especially when idle, but I don't want to hear much when it's running either. It's going to be inside a cabinet so doesn't have to be stunningly beautiful, but I don't want it to look spectacularly ugly either. My budget is $2000. I want HDMI video to the TV (LCD, 1080p), either with audio or with a separate analogue audio cable. I also want digital audio (S/PDIF, preferrably coax) to the amp for better quality stereo or 5.1 audio. I'd also like the option of watching either live TV, recorded programs or ripped DVDs on any other PC on the LAN, at the same time as a different program is being watched on the TV and maybe another is being recorded. I believe that all of the hardware I'm thinking of is supported by Linux and MythTV, and although I don't think the necessary drivers are packaged in any distro yet (I'm thinking of using the latest Mythbuntu, only because everything else is running Ubuntu), I do know where to get them. This is my list of hardware: Asus P5Q SE2 motherboard Intel Core2Duo E7600 3.06GHz 1066MHz FSB 2GB PC6400 DDR2 RAM Asus GeForce GT220 1GB DDR3 video card 1.5GB Seagate 7200 RPM SATA HDD (ST31500341AS) Lite-On SATA 240x8 DVD-RW drive Silverstone LC10-E case 500W power supply Logitech diNovo Mini bluetooth keyboard and either of: Hauppage Nova-T-500 MCE dual tuner (PCI) Hauppage 2200 MCE dual tuner (PCI-E) I'll probably add a second tuner card once I've got it all up and running. We have occasionally wished for a third tuner in the past (not often, there's not that much worth watching on TV), so I may as well have four, just in case :-) Is this hardware powerful enough to do all that I want? Do I need more CPU grunt? More RAM? More hard drives? Bigger PSU? Anything else? The only other thing I can think of is remote control. I'd like to be able to control it from my Logitech Harmnony One remote, at least for the most common tasks, so obviously I'll need some sort of IR receiver. From what I've read, the USB IrDA dongle I have is unlikely to work, so I'll need something else. All I've been able to find are receivers bundled with remote handsets, but I already have half a dozen or so of those gathering dust and don't need to add another one to the collection. Advice and suggestions will be gratefully received. I'd like to order the hardware next week, and I'd appreciate knowing that I've chosen badly *before* I part with the money :-) Thanks, John -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 11:29:14AM +0800, jam wrote: On Monday 16 November 2009 09:00:05 slug-requ...@slug.org.au wrote: a) I'd run back and front end of different machines I'd thought of doing that, but because the TV and aerial cable are in the same room, I'd still have to make this machine both fron and back end, so I don't see any great benefit in having a remote back end. Except that you don't want to power up your machine every time you want to check ABC's Finance is set to record weekly, your daughter phones and asks you to record friends or you just want to check that motoGP has higher priority than conflicts and IMHO the EPG is adequate and tracks their sometimes quickly changing schedules EG myth scheduled to record FavoriteProgram on 7 at 19:30. Seven reschedules for 19:32 myth wakes up at 19:29 finds Not scheduled for 19:30 and goes to sleep and does not record at 19:32 !! OK, fair point, I hadn't thought of it that way. I think I'll still get this going as a combined back front end to start with, and I can always split it apart later, or more likely, get a new low power front end going and move this box downstairs. Thanks, John -- Okay, you must really hate QIC drives. :-) Not nearly as much as the TK50 and its spawn. -- Rik Steenwinkel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 05:45:52PM +1100, I wrote: Advice and suggestions will be gratefully received. I'd like to order the hardware next week, and I'd appreciate knowing that I've chosen badly *before* I part with the money :-) Thanks to everyone who replied. You've given me some useful information and a few things to think about before I order any h/w. Exactly what I needed :-) Thanks, John -- People who love sausages, respect the law, and work with IT standards shouldn't watch any of them being made. -- Peter Gutmann -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
