I am heading off to Law School coming this fall so I am looking to complete a MythTV project some time before then (since I will have no time or money when school starts).

I am looking to recycle as much old equipment as I can.

I have a Dell PIII 450 mhz which runs pretty well and has 512mb RAM. I was thinking of purchasing two Hauppage 250s and using this as my backend.

I also have an old Aptiva, but I think it is only a PII, maybe 300 mhz (maybe less).

Both of these already have Linux running on them.

Would the Hauppage cards work for these machines, even though they are old as dirt? (7+ years)

Also, if I want to play DVDs and/or record DVDs into a video library, would the DVD reader/writer need to be on the backend or the frontend?

I want to purchase a Mac Mini and use the MythTV frontend for Mac OS X with an ATI Remote Wonder for navigation. If I need to build a CPU up from the ground I will likely not be able to purchase the Mac Mini, though.

So for those of you who have experience, will my low-end backends work as long as I have the Hauppage? Storage should not be a serious issue. I plan on about 1 terabyte of storage space if I can rig up a second backend.

Sincerely,
Pacer the Loon

I do not plan on recording HDTV at this time. I do not have digital cable at this time. I might have this at some point.

I plan on recording and outputting at the 740x410(?) resolution unless it just looks too bad and then simply go with the basic resolution for all TVs.

I might or might not convert files to MPEG4. I imagine I'd need a bigger beast to do so.

I have a glitzy and fast new Dell P4 that could likely be both a backend and frontend if I wanted to, but I have it as my primary work machine running Windoze.

I do have an extra PC Case that I could but a new motherboard in, but this would probably put me out .... $100, $200, at least $300, likely $500. Add the $300 for the two cards + the ATI remote, it adds up.

So I am just trying to figure out where I should put resources. I hear the backend is less resource-dependent with a good MPEG2 card like the Hauppage 250 or 350.

It's probably not what you want to hear but both machines are severly underpowered for this application. Please see this page on the wiki: http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=PickingComponents and do a search for articles by me containing the terms "pricing exercise".

Sadly the "classic" Chaintech 7NIF2 motherboard that Cecil uses in one of his boxes is not generally available any more. However the Tier 1 and Tier 2 forums should provide several alternatives in the same price range.

The website (http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO ... ure_device) lists this specs:




I have a PIII 450 mhz. With the capture card I think it might work.

I might put two in, although I will need to reorganize my internal space.

I might even be able to make the Aptiva work, if I can figure out what it is.

In the case of MPEG-2 hardware capture systems, the vast majority of CPU is required for playback decoding the Mpeg video. This is where you may run into problems.

Yes, but I also said this in my first post:


So does anyone have experience running a back-end with these low specs, and if so are there any major pitfalls?

I have heard that sometimes video capture will not run so smoothly on low-end systems .. is this true even with the MPEG-2 encoder on the capture card?

Also, anyone tried using the Mac Mini as the frontend yet?

Actually, as a further follow-up:

Does any decoding take place on the backend? Or does all of it take place on the front-end?

I was under the impression the decoding took place on the machine that was the front-end and the back-end simply did the encoding and delivered the encoded files through a stream to be decoded by the front-end machine.

Also, one pitfall I might see is if I want to re-encode something from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 then I will have problems with my low specs.

Lastly, does my DVD player need to be on the Front-End or the Back-End in order to play DVDs? What about in order to record DVDs?

I strongly suggest a search of the forum. The information is out there, and if you're going to Law School you're going to have to learn to do a literature search sooner or later...

Yes. i do believe Knoppmyth can work with your existing hardware. Check these links for references. The first link is my system. I have it up and running now.

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3393

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2168

I have searched the forum and it has provided a wealth of information. What I was looking for was a response from someone who might have tried working with similar specs as my own in order to get their reaction to the set up.

Thanks Larry.

I am really excited about the possibility of using these two ancient machines. I was afraid I would have to buy entirely new hardware, but this looks like it will work just fine.

If all goes well with finances this month, I look to begin the plunge at the beginning of next month. Should be interesting.