On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 02:05:37AM +1100, Jake Anderson wrote:
Jake,
Thanks for your input, much appreciated.
> 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 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 haven't played with the audio side much yet so I cant help you too
> much there.
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.
>> 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.
>>
> Myth will do that provided your not on a wireless network.
I have GigE.
> ripped dvd's etc will need to be shared over NFS or something as
I can do that. I already have both NFS and Samba running on other
machines.
> you can run mythfrontend on the remote sites and it'll pick up the
> recorded tv though.
That's what I'd figured, but it's nice to have it confirmed.
> Suggestions specifically.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> CPU load watching HDTV is ~5% or so with VDPAU doing all the work. It
That should keep the noise down :-)
> cant *quite* manage advanced 2x deinterlacing for HD footage, I
> overclocked it to 9400 speed as well with no change. So if you really
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.
> The blue-ray's I have managed to watch @#...@#%@#$%$%^%&(^%&^$# DRM!!! GRRR!
> have played fine on it again at 5% cpu for a 1080P movie (twilight).
OK. I hadn't thought much about Blu-Ray yet. I agree with you about
the DRM though.
>> Hauppage 2200 MCE dual tuner (PCI-E)
>>
> That's where your going to have the difficulties with drivers, I haven't
> looked but I'm not aware as yet of any PCI-E cards that are supported as
> yet out of the box.
Not out of the box, but there is a driver for the 2200:
http://www.kernellabs.com/blog/?page_id=17
http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2009-October/266154.html
> There was a twin digital PCI-E tuner floating about with drivers "real
> soon now" as I recall.
That might have been the 2200/2250.
> I'm thinking of getting some cheap USB tuners from deal extreme or
> similar, the people over on the shepherd list (the TV guide you will
> use) have had some good and some bad experiences with them.
I have an AverMedia USB tuner, which does have Linux drivers, but
they're not very good. The tuner works the first time I plug it into my
laptop, but if I remove it I have to reboot to use it again. It also
occasionally causes the laptop to hang (needing a power reset) when it's
plugged in.
>> 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?
>>
> Way too much CPU ;->
Too much CPU is barely enough :-)
> 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.
> 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.
>> The only other thing I can think of is remote control. I'd like to be
> I just use the keyboard, the WAF is ok and it seems to work ok as an
> everyday thing, Its also handy to be able to jump to another desktop and
I'd like both. We'll need the remote to drive the TV and sound system
anyway, and juggling multiple remotes is why we now have the Harmony One
:-)
> 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.
> range is excellent, actually I'm not sure about that, It might be
> stupendous, but I have never actually managed to get out of range no
> matter how many rooms away I was when I lent on the keyboard.
I won't need to be any more than a few metres away, especially if I can
use the IR remote for most things.
Thanks,
John
--
$VBC is *very* paranoid about not allowing holes in the WAN, if only because
once you get in it's a target-rich environment, a script-kiddie's wet dream.
-- Matt McLeod
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