I am proposing to replace my old Dish DVR and upgrade to HD at the same time. I also want to stream vids music from a network. I’ll start with getting the box up and running and then add the HD OTA card (Air2PC) or the HDHomeRun, call HD phase 2. Looking for phase 1 to be as close to Tier 1 as possible.

Here’s my proposed hardware, please point out/suggest problems, issues or upgrades. [RED is actual purchased parts that changed due to availability or price]

Case: Enermax HTPC-100B Micro-ATX
PS: Coolergiant EG285S-VB 270W (inlcuded)
MB: ASUS M2NPV-VM Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Micro ATX
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+ Socket AM2
RAM: Corsair TWIN2X1024A-6400 1GB Kit DDR2-800 XMS2-6400
HD: Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200JB 320GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM
Tuner: Air2PC
DVD: MadDog 16X DVD±R DVD Burner

I will pickup a remote at a later time and use a wired kb/mouse for the time being. Any suggestions on a painless wireless kb/mouse solution?

TIA

(Opps, changed RAM)

Well the hardware looks good. I would recommend upgrading or purchasing a bigger hard drive though. I am currently using a 100GB LVM'd to a 250GB. My avereage over the air recording of HD is about 7.1GB an hour. Couple that with the average 2.1GB an hour for SD (Dish Network) recordings, and you may find 120GB to become full quite rapidly

As to the HD OTA cards, I use 2 air2pc OTA (Over the Air) only cards, they are quite inexpensive, I acquired mine on ebay for about $40 each. I too have replaced my Dish Network DVR. Your config is not much different than mine. I use a smaller cpu, but it does HDTV quite well, with the on board nvidia 6100 graphics.

Again, I would invest in some larger drives. 300GB are currently under $100 in most places.

Using knoppmyth, you should have everything up and configured in no time flat. I would currently recommend against R5D1, as it has issues with the AMD64 cpu. I am using R5C7 with the .20 tarballs from mythtv.org and having great success.

Best of Luck.

_________________
Knoppmyth R5D1 - Mythtv .20svn-fixes
HD Frontend/Master Backend
AMD64 3200+-1GB Corsair-800GB LVM PATA/SATA
Biostar GeForce 6100 Motherboard M109
1x Air2Pc rev.2 1x PVR150MCE
Maddog DVD/RW-DL Drive

Thanks for the tips and encouragement sjerome. I was thinking of adding a larger HD.

Since you had the Dish DVR I had a question about the transition from DVR to MythTv, I'm thinking of the 'wife factor' here. I want it to be a smooth move as she can use the DVR with no problems. Also, I've been using the DVR for 2 tvs. What would I need to add to the above setup to feed a 2nd tv? Or would a 2nd front end be a better route?

http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... sKeyboards

BTW - Searching the forums for "wireless keyboard" will turn up more options.

Yeah thanks, I found the wiki after I posted. I'm trying to do my homework, but sometimes sorting thru is a little daunting. I'm contantly trying to 're-find' where I read something. With that said, this forum is a great (re)sourse.

Well I purchased the hardware (I need to revise the list above as I changed the HD and ram), and last night I put it all together. Hardware looks ok at this point.

I did an attempt at installing KnoppMyth, but ran into problems as I hadn't downloaded newer drivers. I going to DL the updated BIOS and drivers and try another go at the install. Doubt I'll have time until weekend however... the wait is going to kill me.

Just to update. I couldn't get R5C7 to install properly, something with the video not configured correctly. Went to R5D1 and the install completed. With that said, I still have problems...

I never had any sucess getting R5D1 to work with my AMD64 processor, I rolled back to R5C7. As to the easy migration from dish to myth, my wife doesn't know any better. I use an irblaster to control the dish receiver, and all she does is enter the channel number with our MCE remote, and it just goes there. My dish card is a pvr150 and it came with the remote, however the card itself is installed back in the office on my slave mythbox. My frontend has only HD cards in it. So with using the irblaster, that I built myself with parts from radio shack, all she does is enter "108" while watching tv and it goes to "lifetime". I also have 2 lineups from labs.zap2it.com, one for HD OTA, and one for Dish Network. So our program guide shows both the HD stuff, and the Dish channels we watch. I bound a key to the remote, that if she is in the guide, all she has to do is hit the "jump" button, and she can go from HD to dish channels, that easy. Knoppmyth just make the whole "wife friendly pvr" thing a breeze. Its a wonderful thing.

_________________
Knoppmyth R5D1 - Mythtv .20svn-fixes
HD Frontend/Master Backend
AMD64 3200+-1GB Corsair-800GB LVM PATA/SATA
Biostar GeForce 6100 Motherboard M109
1x Air2Pc rev.2 1x PVR150MCE
Maddog DVD/RW-DL Drive

Great tips about the remote programming with Dish. Once I get everything up and running I'll play around with the Harmony remote I have, try to get that dialed in. If I remember, Harmony has a MythTV setting but I'll have to look again as it's been a while.