Re: [SLUG] Re: SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
John Clarke wrote: 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. One small other thing to think about wrt front/back ends, transcode and commflag are what pull the CPU, At one stage my tv was a little underpowered for that so I set my desktop machine up as a backend, with no tuners or anything in it. When I turned my desktop on it would connect to the master backend and then run all transcoding/commflagging jobs, I just limited the jobs on the master to 0 so mine did everything. If you did something like that then an intel atom based board with nvidia GPU would probably do the job nicley and you could get away with probably just the one fan (PSU?) in the system -- 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] 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] Re: SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought
On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 10:19:29AM +0800, jam wrote: James, Thanks for your reply. I appreciate your input. Rather than 'saying you oughta ...' this is what I'd do and why ... 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. I do not do commercial flagging as each of the channels does there to thing to break it (eg 10 turns off the logo BEFORE and on AFTER the ad breaks. 7 skips blank frame pre and post amble etc). Well, they don't want you skipping ads so they'll do whatever they can to make it hard for you. I'm happy just to record the programs and skip the ads manually during playback. That's what we do now with the (analogue) hard disc recorder. Wireless networking does work, but wired is much better here. Same here. Wireless is OK for the laptops, but I've found it to be not reliable enough for the Squeezebox, so now it's on the wired LAN. The MthTV box will be in the same cabinet, so I'll hook it up to the wired LAN too (I already have a second ethernet cable back to the switch). Thanks, John -- There is no chance of a fuel explosion because the butane is not stored in a conventional tank. Instead, the fuel is confined to the porous marrow of the hamster's skeleton, made from our uniquely designed reticulated foam. -- RealHamster.com -- 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 Saturday 14 November 2009 02:26:52 slug-requ...@slug.org.au wrote: 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 :-) Rather than 'saying you oughta ...' this is what I'd do and why ... a) I'd run back and front end of different machines The backend can be a single core 1G ram machine. I use the WD green disks being low power and quiet. I use an antec NSK1380 case. Backend is 30W (at the meter with a stop watch) Server 24/7 low power means you avoid all the WOL hastles, you can watch any time, and by using mthweb you can schedule stuff from any browser anytime. b) your frontend needs some grunt and good graphics. minimyth works well http://www.minimyth.org/ but you could also use the new quite cheap kingston serial 32G flash disks. You can optimize the frontend to do your audio and graphics as you want. I do not do commercial flagging as each of the channels does there to thing to break it (eg 10 turns off the logo BEFORE and on AFTER the ad breaks. 7 skips blank frame pre and post amble etc). So cpu usage stays low. I'd use a wireless keyboard (logitek make a nice keyboard and numpad, the numpad makes a nice remote and keyboard is there when you need to internet- stuff that machine. I'd buy one DVD USB drive. Use it to install the frontend, then keep it on the backend. You can commit stuff to a dvd-iso on backend copy it to front end and burn on frontend. Wireless networking does work, but wired is much better here. James -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
