Hi All.

Spent some weeks now researching Mythtv and the Knoppmyth installer which I am hoping to use real soon.

Spent some time investigating the forums and came up with the following hardware spec, which I have now ordered and am awaiting delivery.

Most of the hardware seems pretty straight forward and compatable, was looking for some 'pointers' before I throw the thing together and see what happens.

My linux is pretty poor compared to windows, but gradually am migrating to linux at work with not to many problems. Have managed to get Trixbox (Voip system) working on a Proliant DL380 and now run our own email and www servers on a few cobalt raq 4's.

Our sky+ box at home has been playing up ever since it went in and we have just recently cancelled the subscription. So Free channels over sat for a while.

Anyway, do I stand a chance with this guys???

Case - Sonata Desktop MATX Case with 220W PSU
Motherboard - Asus M2NPV-VM with Additional Headder For Video Out
Processor - AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (2Ghz)
Fan - Foxconn AMD AM2 Heatsink + Fan
Ram - 1Gb DDR2 800Mhz PC6400
Hdd - Seagate 160Gb SATA
DVD Burner - Samsung SH-S203B Dual Layer 20X SATA DVD Burner

So, TV out should be ok with either HDTV direct from motherboard (but no HDTV TV yet, and video from additonal headder)

To get the sky into the system, ordered a Technotrend S-1500 with CI. Have seen the card supported on the mythtv hw list. Hoping to add a dragon (t-rex) cam to decode the sky with our card and subscription. Found details of how to do this on other forums.

When the box is running, would like to add a further S-1500 to feed the Hotbird dish into the system as well so we have both Sky and Hotbird feeds thru the system. Again, will have a CI version so we can add various cams to it as well.

Not looking forward to installing onto the SATA Hdd, but other people on here seem to have the motherboard and SATA Hdd working with no problems.

Not so sure the SATA DVD burner was a good idea?????
Got a feeling it may end up in my PC and the one from my PC may end up in the Mythtv box.

Want the whole thing to run front end and back end at the moment - one step at a time.

Next plan to use our old Xbox as an upstairs front end, since the kids now have a 360 its pretty redundant.

Any tips or advice would be truly appreciated.

Kind Regards
Phil.

Howdy Phil,

The hardware looks fine, no need to worry about the SATA stuff these days, they work fine. I don't have a SATA HDD but my DVD is SATA and I've had no problems with it. I dare say that you'll probably want to invest in a larger capacity HDD soon as HD recordings will eat up a fair chunk.

I don't have an XBOX but I've read they don't have enough grunt to play HD files. More reading here.

Regards,
Kirk.

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MBE/FE ~ R5F27 ~ Asus A8N-VM-CSM ~ AMD64 3500+ ~ 1GB RAM ~ 1.5TB Storage ~ Nova-T-500 ~ SH-S183A DVDRW ~ LC20M Case ~ iMON-Pad Remote
FE ~ Diskless ~ Asus M2NPV-VM ~ AMD X2 BE-2350 (45w) ~ 1GB RAM ~ TT Lanbox Lite ~ iMON-Pad Remote

One warning, I had a 300W power supply and ended up moving up to a 420, but that was when I added several things to the existing system. Expandability may be limited with that power supply unless mine was just really inefficient.

_________________
LinHES Release 6.04.00
Mboard MSI PM8PM-V P4M800
CPU - Intel Celeron D 336 Processor 2.80GHZ
Memo - Corsair VS512MB533D2 512MB DDR2-533
Hard D - Hitachi T7K500 250GB Serial ATA
Wireless - Netgear wg311
Tuner Card - PVR-150

might look at a larger HDD, they seem to fill up quick.

I agree. Look at the pirce/GB curve.. 500 GB is below the breakpoint! I noticed on a recent ASUS motherboard that I got.. the PATA drive comes up as HDE, even when there are not SATA drives.. KnopppMyth is all setup to install to HDA, so some motherboards forces you to SATA. OH.. but this works OK. (I plug my old PATA drives into a USB chassis.. and I use it to off-load prorgrams that I transcode for DVD burning.)

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// Brian - Hardware:
ASUS P5P800 - P4 3Ghz, 500 GB PATA HD
ASUS P5K-V - P4 Core2 Duo, 500 GB SATA HD
Hauppauge PVR-350, IR Blaster, Comcast Digital Cable
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/KnoppMyth/
KnoppMyth R5F27 >> R5.5