Hey, just need a little help planning a Mini-ITX-based Myth box... Unfortunately, I'm a complete Linux rookie, so some of these will be rather thoroughly n00bish. My apologies in advance.

1. Both M-Series boards have hardware-based MPEG2 decoding, so would the ME6000 be sufficient to do the job, or should I spring a few extra bucks for the M10000 Nehemiah? And is the onboard decoder supported under Linux?
2. Since the case I'll be building the system in is not very high (I'm using an old NES to house the thing), I need either a half-height tuner card, or an external USB 2.0 tuner. Any recommendations on either one or the other that will work well under Linux?
3. Actually, I'll be using my system with my digital cable, so is a tuner strictly necessary, or can I use MythTV with a simple video capture device? If so, I've had my eyes on this puppy, and I'd like to know, does anybody know if there are Linux drivers for it? And any other recommendations in this category?
4. Speaking of my digital cable, would MythTV be able to control my Motorola DCT-2224 cable box directly through the serial port, or would I need to get an IR relay? I'm really hoping for the former, so I can just toss in a cheap homebuilt lirc receiver (and also avoid the kludge that is the IR relay).

Thanks in advance for your help.

You need to rethink you plans if you plan on using that KWorld... I don't think it is supported under Linux and if it were, did you see the minimum requirements? PIV 1.6 GHz which the EPIA-M is not.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

To tell the truth, I didn't even notice that part. O_O

Well, any other recommendations on a good half-height tuner/capture card or an external USB 2.0 tuner/capture device?

I have none... I think someone asked this same question on the myth mailing list a few days ago, check the MythTV archive.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Thanks for pointing me in that direction--while tracking down the Yuan card mentioned in that thread was a wild goose chase, it did lead me to the ATI E-Home Wonder, which should do the job nicely.

Which brings me to my next point...

Since I'm going to have hardware MPEG2 encoding (from the E-Home Wonder), and hardware MPEG2 decoding (from the onboard decoder in the M-Series boards), is there any compelling reason for me to select the M10000 over the ME6000?

Why a half height card? what about a riser and using a full size card. I think it would be doable in the nes case and allows for the use of a harpagee 250 or other full size mpeg2 encoder card.

F`or a cool flexy riser that I'm using, see:
http://linitx.com/product_info.php?cPat ... cts_id=137

So to the 6000 vs the 10000 its a hard call my 10k uses only about 30->40% cpu during live tv, but it takes 8:1 to transcode to divx i.e. 1hr mpeg2 takes 8hrs to convert to divx.. I'm sure with tweeking it will be better but thats still a long time, more than 3hrs capture per day on average would leave it working constantly.

DVD playback without use of the MPEG decoder takes most of the CPU in fast sections, I don't have the figures (as running top ruins the play back) but it didn't work until I got all the optimised drivers installed, again you can off load this to the mpeg decoder, but I prefer MPlayer at the moment over the via specialised version of xine.

Also its worth remembering that the 6k is nearly half the clock speed for integer work and a quarter the speed for floating point, has no sse and so if something comes along that takes over divx as the choice standard you may need that extra performance just for playback.

Personally I would only consider the 6k because it is truely silent, not to save a few bucks.

The capture device uses usb 2.0 which linux supports but is very new so few device drivers have been writen. I think you will be waiting a long time to get that working.

Oh one last thought, why not split the server and the frontend? then the nes box doesn't need any encoder card at all, or even harddrive see:
http://linpvr.org/
run knoppix on the backend server, say an old PIII 500+ with a generic pci capture card and a large hd (depending on hardware lying around this may be cheaper than a pvr250 and riser)
run linpvr on the EPIA M with no card, no hd, possibly even no fans!

OK this is getting a bit long now but if you are putting it in a nes case why not add:
http://www.sealiecomputing.com/retrozone/
It should work with mame if it behaves like a usb joystick! They even do a version that allows you to keep the original sockets.