I have been reading these forums for about a month now and after doing some research finally made the financial plunge today…

CHAINTECH 7NIF2 nForce2 IGP Motherboard ($70)

2@DDR 256MB|DDR400 CL3 PC3200 RTL $66

CASE ATHENATECH|A100BB.200 MATX $41

CPU AMD|2500 /333 ATHLON XP BARTON% $75

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-350 Personal Video Recorder (990) $171

Maxtor 200GB ATA HDD $120

Shipping $30

So after a $503 investment I hope things go smootly.

I just need to put assemble the hardware once I get it and then load KnoppMyth on it and hope it works out of the box.

Is the KnoppMythR5A10.iso the only thing I need to install or do I need to install Debian first?

My first impression was that KnoppMyth in fact install debian for you and you just need to make some changes, if hardware requires that. But I am beginning to rethink that initial though.

You just need to burn the ISO to a CD-R, no need to install anything else first on the fresh computer.

You will have to perform configuration, and you may have to perform some driver and/or software updates, depending on your hardware.

-brendan

Particularly if mfl2k3 is planning on using the PVR-350's TV-out.

Well I have a G4 Ti4200 that has S-Video out, but the CHAINTECH 7NIF2 also looks like it has a built in GF4 with built in S-Video.

Am I wrong in thinking I can use this S-Video as the vide out?

Using the Chaintech's S-Video out is definitely possible and should be straighforward. Using the 350's video out is much less straightforward; some people have posted having problems getting it to work with the R5A10 preview release.

Are their built in advantages to using the one on the 350 over the one on the MB? If there are clear advantages then I will research getting it to work correctly.

Thanks

The 350 will enable you to playback recordings maintaining the original interlaced frames. Using a video card, I don't think this is possible. You can de-interlace in software to remove interlacing artefacts, but the resultant video will not look as smoothly animated as the correctly played back interlaced frames. Might only really be a problem if you watch a lot of sports.

Ok so this is something I need to look into more. Are there things I can do to make sure my 350 playback setup is smooth, or do I just do the standard install from the ISO and handle the problems after the fact?

I dont have a 350. I am dissapointed that I cant get a properly interlaced display, but to answer your question, just install first and get the 350 output going later.

and on a side not I can guarantee you that there is nothing that you can do to make tvout from a pvr350 go smoothly. At this point I don't think I've even heard a success story with it on R5A10.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Then maybe I should just go the R5A9 route and wait until R5A10 has success.

well pvr350 is not going to be easy on any version of any distro ever made so far to date. pvr350 tvoutput is just difficult to setup period. I'm sure it's possible on R5A10 it's just that noone I've heard of has tried the right combo of stuff. R5A9 is going to have the same problems. If you want walkthroughs that are semi effective (although lately lots of people are saying it doesn't work for them) go with R4V5.

But my suggestion would be just set it up using the onboard tvout, and skip the pvr350 tvout. at least initially.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

I'm going to be giving this a try some time during the week, my machine hasn't really been put into production use yet so I don't mind screwing it up. I'll write up my experiences once I'm done.

-d

I received my Hauppauge! WinTV-PVR 350 today, picked up a Maxtor 200GB ATA/133 8MB Cache HDD from Staples today for $49.99 after instant rebate ($40) and mail in rebate ($30) and got a heatsink/fan for my CPU today.

I expect the rest of my order from New Egg on Thursday.