Ok, well I plan on getting a PVR-250 or 350, and my sister got a new pc and has no use for her old one. Now, its really old (was running windows 95 and had like 32MB ram). Would it be possible to have this run the frontend only and have everything run off my box or some other way of doing it? I would like to let my mom use my pc to record her soaps so I dont have to pop a tape in her for everyday, but I want her to be able to access the stuff on her pc. if not, whats the lowest thing I could get this to work on?

This question cannot be accurately answered if all we know is the system has "32 MB ram".

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I checked the system properties box in windows but all it says is "Authentic AMD". I dont know if theres a system info tool, Im looking though.

ok, found compaw diagnostics, says its 200mhz and has a 2.1GB hard drive

Ouch. It will not work. There is a recommended hardware requirement list in the myth doc's. Folks have also put together various lists here on the forum.

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

ok, thanks. Ill search around then

I tried running a fronent on an old PII-450 and it wasn't enough horsepower to decode MPEG-2 files my PVR-250 made. Maybe with vxmc enabled...??

Anyway, my current frontend is an 800 MHz athlon tbird w/ 256 meg ram and geforce 4 mx. It works fine. You can probably remove the board, cpu, and memory from your old box and replace it with something a bit faster for under 200 bucks. Oh, and you'll need a larger HD. They are CHEAP these days. Since it's a frontend only, and I don't store anything beyond the software, a 10 gig drive is plenty (now if I can just get NFS up and running).

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.

Yes unfortunately everyone wants to use a low end frontend box, however the frontend box needs more horsepower than the backend when using pvr250.

Ooooh, this thread got me thinking about using my amd k6-2 550 as a frontend for another room using an nvdia card with xvmc support.

Does xvmc bring down cpu usage significantly, like the tv out from the pvr350?

Would I need a hard drive at all, and if running only from the cd are we able to use xvmc for tv-out?

well xvmc does help the cpu utilization, but it won't help as much as pvr350 tvout as it is only motion compensation not complete mpeg2 hardware decode.

You cannot install software while running off the CD. Do you have small drive laying around you can use?

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!