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Upgrading old system--recommendations?
http://forums.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19868		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  DoomedTX [ Sun May 17, 2009 8:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Upgrading old system--recommendations?
As mentioned in my related post, 2 things have caused me to upgrade my nearly 5-year-old MythBox: the failure of the second 250GB Samsung PATA drive in a year and the purchase of a shiny new Plasma TV. We want to take advantage of the 4 ClearQAM and 50+ regular cable channels offered by our cable provider in the expanded basic package. It's the best we can do without relying on cable boxes or proprietary DVRs.

My old system was AMD Athlon based, has an AGP video card, Soundblaster Live Value and 2xPATA drives (1-500GB and 1 failing 250GB). I also have 2 PATA DVD drives, one ROM and one RW. For tuners I have 2xHauppauge 150s and one 250 in the master backend/frontend.

The slave backend is a P4 3.0GHZ with an AGP video card and 2x150 tuners that hardly get used and won't be missed.

Now that MythTV is such a part of our lives, and now that it's apparently going to shut us down at least once a year, I've been given the go-ahead for a substantial upgrade. My end goal is to be able to record at least 2 ClearQAM channels and one plain cable at the same time and have the processor/graphics/memory power to view HD content. The master unit needs DVI output but the slave backend needs to have the same RCA-out video capability as my current TV-out card because it's connected to a 27" CRT TV.

My questions are:

1) Is there anything from the original setup I can/should keep? I'm not looking for entry-level performance in the system; I want it to be able to watch one HD program while recording another.

2) Aside from the Dragon hardware which as far as I can tell hasn't been discussed on the forum since April 2008, is there another single-solution MythTV provider if I don't want to build 2 boxes from scratch? Normally I'd putter around the forums for a few weeks finding out what's best component-by-component, but now that our primary Mythbox is down I've been instructed to fix the problem ASAP.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you might have.
Author:  Tweak [ Sun May 17, 2009 11:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Upgrading old system--recommendations?
DoomedTX wrote:
As mentioned in my related post, 2 things have caused me to upgrade my nearly 5-year-old MythBox: the failure of the second 250GB Samsung PATA drive in a year and the purchase of a shiny new Plasma TV. We want to take advantage of the 4 ClearQAM and 50+ regular cable channels offered by our cable provider in the expanded basic package. It's the best we can do without relying on cable boxes or proprietary DVRs.


Have you considered implementing the Hauppauge 1212? You may have to rent a cable box that has component outputs to descramble your HD content, but it would least allow you to record it in HD.

DoomedTX wrote:
2) Aside from the Dragon hardware which as far as I can tell hasn't been discussed on the forum since April 2008, is there another single-solution MythTV provider if I don't want to build 2 boxes from scratch? Normally I'd putter around the forums for a few weeks finding out what's best component-by-component, but now that our primary Mythbox is down I've been instructed to fix the problem ASAP.

Depending where you are located:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Commercial_MythTV_System
Author:  DoomedTX [ Mon May 18, 2009 9:19 pm ]
Post subject: 
Thanks for the info and suggestions. It seems like Dragon is the best of the lot in terms of price, compatibility with Knoppmyth and a full spec listing.

As far as the Hauppauge 1212 goes, I don't think that will help much. Our local cable company provides the big 4 (Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC) on ClearQAM. With a digital tuner we could get one or two additional HD channels and PPV. Other than those small additions we're already getting everything the cable company offers by having expanded basic. Dish and DirecTV offer a lot more, but IMO the equipment essentially negates the need for MythTV at a much higher cost.

I was able to power up my current system and watch TV last night so I thought I'd slow down my search, but when I got home from work this afternoon I found it had locked up at 4 in the morning. I tried resetting it 5 times and couldn't get it to boot, so now I'm in a hurry again. I think I'll either order a Dragon or see what kind of system I can build around a pair of pcHDTV 5500s (available only at mythic.tv according to Google products) and get it on its way.
Author:  Martian [ Wed May 20, 2009 1:58 pm ]
Post subject: 
I'd highly recommend the HDHomerun for your digital / QAM tuner.

Also, why not build a brand new combine FE / BE system to hook up to the plasma and use one of the old systems as a FE only on the 27" CRT. I suppose you couldn't watch the HD recordings on the CRT without transcoding first but I'm guessing you would want to watch those on the plasma anyway?
Author:  mcdrama [ Sun Jun 07, 2009 10:18 am ]
Post subject: 
if all of the HD channels you watch are not encrypted I would highly recommend the HDHomeRun from Silicon Dust. it just works. :)

For disk drive replacement checkout this page on Tom's Hardware:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3.5- ... ks,24.html

Make sure to get something with a 5 year warranty. Most disk drives with a 5 year warranty will have a better MTBF and tend to last much longer in hot environments.

A key to disk drive longevity (besides a quality drive) is cooling. I can not emphasize this enough! make sure to have good airflow/heat dissipation for your disks. :)

For hardware you can start by looking at the ArchLinux HCL here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HCL

not sure how much is there but its worth a look.

Personally I spent some time looking for hardware that fit my need on newegg, searched reviews for keyword 'Linux'. then googled <HW make&model>+Linux.

good luck with your build.
Author:  mark60050 [ Mon Jun 08, 2009 8:41 am ]
Post subject: 
I can't tell you that this configuration works yet, but I am upgrading my mythtv box as well with the the purchase of my new LCD. I ordered the following parts a few days ago:

ASUS P5N7A-VM
CORE 2 QUAD Q8400 2.66G (1333Mhz)
KINGSTON 4GB DDR2 800=(2GB x 2)
HITACHI 1tb 0A38016 SATA2 3.0gb/sec 7200rpm

I am re-using the following from my old mythtv box.

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 250 - Model 980
HD-5500 for ATSC HD

I choose the ASUS P5N7A-VM because of post in the TIER 2:

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=19486&start=15

and also because it was listed on mythtv.org:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Asus_P5N7A-VM

So I assumed that there would be a lot of folks using this board. The board has HDMI out and will work with VDPAU. I'll be sure to post to TIER1 (hopefully) or TIER2 when I get it working with R6. I will try R6 first. I can always fall back to R5.5 as there is already the TIER2 posting.

I am considering a Hauppauge 1212 in combination with Dish Network Turbo HD package. That would something I might try in a month or so. Currently I have analog cable.

By the way, I don't think a CORE 2 QUAD Q8400 is necessary for mythtv. The Q8400 was just a sweat spot for price versus performance. I plan on encoding some shows to watch off line on my ipod
Author:  tophee [ Mon Jun 08, 2009 10:34 am ]
Post subject: 
Hey DoomedTX,
I am very pleased with my new purchases for upgrading my mythbox.
I bought:
Intel E7400
Asus P5QL-E (it has 3 pci slots). I needed to install R6 as 5.5's kernal doesn't support the networking card. With a tiny tweak, (copying one file over and changing some stuff in Mythwelcome --setup and in Mythtv-setup) Mythwelcome is working flawlessly.
The graphics card I chose wasn't the cheapest, but it wasn't an expensive one either. I went for a Gainward 9500gt (passively cooled) as the 40nm gpu would run cooler when I have a go with vdpua and has a native HDMI out.
HTH.
Chris
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