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 Post subject: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:01 pm 
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Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:39 pm
Posts: 48
So I am going to attempt to make a new FE/BE since mine keeps freezing/crashing and I am not sure why. I have tried to keep it under $500 since the wife kind of doesn't want me to spend on it.... Here is what I have configured please let me know if it looks ok and will work ok, I am hoping one day to do HD


Sony Optiarc 24X DVD Burner, Bulk Package Black SATA Model AD-7280S-0B - OEM
$17.99
Seagate Barracuda Green ST1500DL003 1.5TB 5900 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
$99.99
Mushkin Enhanced Essentials 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit
$21.99
ASUS P8H61-M (REV 3.0) LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
$84.99
Intel Pentium G840 Sandy Bridge 2.8GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623G840
$84.99
hec Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC Steel 7K09BBA30FNRX Micro ATX Media Center 300W Power Supply / HTPC Case
$59.99
Hauppauge 1213 WinTV-HVR-2250 PCI-E x1 Dual TV Tuner
$136.22

Total Comes to 506.16 w/ out shipping


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 7:16 am 
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Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2006 11:14 am
Posts: 1343
Location: Orlando FL
jealous

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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 4:54 pm 
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Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 9:47 am
Posts: 535
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Given a quick scan...

1) I think you only need about 2GB of memory so you can save there. I run all my systems on 2GB or less.
2) I think this is an Intel graphics set up. If you plan to play h.264 based content this may not be ideal in the short term. Nvidia is recommended for VDPAU. There is planned VAAPI support for Intel in myth 0.25 but it will be an early release. Your one saving grace though is I think the processor will have enough power to decode that content anyway.
3) I personally won't buy a SONY optical device. Aside from their root kit scandal, I have simply not found them to be reliable compared to say an inexpensive LG. Other may have a different opinion. It is also hard to trust a company who has an interest in media distribution; I view it as a potential conflict of interest.

my 2 cents and I know there are others with more recent experience in component purchase.

Myself I have two boards which are core2 duo based on an ASUS motherboard that has an integrated Nvidia 9300. 2GB of memory with 0.5GB of that memory allocated to the onboard graphics. I also splurged and got the Antec Fusion case which has an iMon LCD display on the front. I did all this for under $500 about 2 or 3 years ago.

I also have a P4 based system (PCI!) with an Nvidia 8600GX which handles h.264.

I also have a little ASUS netbook which interestingly has an nvidia 9300 in it. I plan to use this for yet another front end!


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:24 pm 
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Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:00 am
Posts: 9551
Location: Arlington, MA
I went through this exercise about a year ago now. http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=22053 The hardware came to under $500 then, even with a nicer case and an Nvidia graphics card to provide accelerated video support. Going with an AMD CPU/board rather than Intel knocked $45 to $50 off the top. A smaller drive accounted for another $30, and using existing tuners for the rest. Some of that was taken up with the video card, a quiet after market cooler, miscellaneous cables, and a better case.

Given how cheap the RAM is you're not going to save anything by going with only 2Gb, or on the DVD burner. Where I see the most room to trim is the CPU/MoBo, the tuner, and the HD. The HDHR3 runs about $100+sh which would knock off ~$36, and unless you've already got a 1Tb HD which is pretty full you might actually consider a smaller cheaper drive since that is an easy incremental update. Where I might put some of that $ would be the case & PS, cheap cases tend to be a pain to work with, and the PS can be both one of the noisiest and "most likely to fail" and components. A bit of extra money here cans save a lot of aggravation.


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 9:42 am 
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Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:39 pm
Posts: 48
I don't use most of my Drive and I think it's only 500 or 750. Big thing is I use to have a lot of DVD's on it to watch... but those are gone now :(. Since Intel Graphics aren't that good I can look at doing an AMD / NVidia Card. Sadly I can't use the HDHR3 as most of my stations are still NTSC, and I fear once they upgrade them to all Digital since the cable company puts "copy once" on everything so I won't be able to use Myth from what I have been reading... I was looking at a different case at first, I built this off a combo new egg had, original case idea was http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811144233 which is a little more, but it's a full size w/ 500 watt power


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:44 pm 
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Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:00 am
Posts: 9551
Location: Arlington, MA
huntermcdole wrote:
Sadly I can't use the HDHR3 as most of my stations are still NTSC, and I fear once they upgrade them to all Digital since the cable company puts "copy once" on everything so I won't be able to use Myth from what I have been reading...

Another option is the PCHDTV HD5500 also about $100 and supposedly capable of acting as a SD tuner as well (I've never used it for anything but digital). Also, don't belive the cable company spin on how something is needed to support the digital transition. Digital isn't a problem, I was able to use both a HDHR and a HD5500, as well as the tuner in my TV, with clear QAM digital signals for most of a year. Encryption, meant to force you to use their cable box, and the cable boxes themselves, are the problem. The only reason you "need" a cable box is to decrypt a signal that they encrypted, so that you would need a cable box. Thus allowing them to charge you more (equipment rental fees), track what you're watching, keep you from exercising your Supreme Court sanctioned fair use rights to time shift using your own equipment, ... all purely for their benefit.
huntermcdole wrote:
I was looking at a different case at first, I built this off a combo new egg had, original case idea was http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811144233 which is a little more, but it's a full size w/ 500 watt power

A 500W PS is completely over the top. The NSK2480 case I used comes with a 380W power supply which is already more power than the box actually needs. It's not a matter of watts but of the PS quality, efficiency, and durability. CPUs, motherboards, and the like are far more energy efficient these days, so unless you are runnings piles of disks or a some power sucking multiple video card rig, 300-350W is plenty.


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:59 pm 
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Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:39 pm
Posts: 48
Ok I did another configuration before you posted tjc, I will look at if there is a case w/ a better psu included but here is what I have so far;

ECS IC780M-A2 (V1.0A) AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
$44.99

AMD Athlon II X3 455 Rana 3.3GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Desktop Processor ADX455WFGMBOX
$79.99

Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)
22.99

MSI N210-MD512D3/LP GeForce 210 512MB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
$29.99

Seagate Barracuda Green ST1500DL003 1.5TB 5900 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
$99.99 (a 500 GB only saves $15)

APEVIA Black / Silver SECC Steel / Aluminum X-MASTER-AL/500 ATX Media Center / HTPC Case
$59.99

Total: $337.94

Reuse:

Hauppauge PVR-250
Hauppauge PVR-150
PATA DVD Drive


**Edit to add QVL ram**


Last edited by huntermcdole on Wed Mar 07, 2012 7:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 9:43 am 
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Joined: Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:12 pm
Posts: 1194
Location: SC
Get a fanless video card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814500237


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 8:51 pm 
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Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:00 am
Posts: 9551
Location: Arlington, MA
Yeah, fanless video card good. :-) I've been very happy with the Asus EN210 even though the heatsink is super humongus gigantic monstrous. It's max GPU temperature reading for the summer was ~50C.

I'm a bit surprised that 95W is the lowest TDP CPU available, and a bit sad to see AMD falling so far behind in the market. On the plus side you'll have buckets of extra CPU power available.


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:05 pm 
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Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:39 pm
Posts: 48
Ok got my parts, now for moving settings/data do I just do a backup on the old and then install on the new, once up do a restore or is there something special I can do? Also is there a command to change the setup resolution? I know I had a hard time last time since it was 800x600 and that won't display on my TV


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 11:25 pm 
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Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:00 am
Posts: 9551
Location: Arlington, MA
If the video card is hooked to the TV via HDMI it shouldn't have any problems getting the EDID info and it should be able to use that even for the console resolutions in the installer. Even my BIOS seems to manage that.

Along with the backup you need to copy the media files onto your new disk (recordings, videos, music, ... under /myth). I forget whether mine was done with rsync across the LAN, or via a external backup drive, or by temporarily installing a drive in the other machine, ...

One thing to beware of, if the new machine will have a different hostname you need to fix that before using the DB backup. Again I forget if I did that via an editing script to tweak the mysqldump file or via SQL commands afterwards. Memory says that at one point I did write and post a SQL script to do it in the DB, search for "change_hostname.sh"...


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:54 pm 
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Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:39 pm
Posts: 48
Well all seems to have gone well :D, only problems I had was getting HDMI audio to work... had to disable onboard, and then do a test to all the hdmi ports to find the one that worked... and still couldn't get to work in the LinHes menu, but I set it in the myth settings and it works.


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 12:46 pm 
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Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:00 am
Posts: 9551
Location: Arlington, MA
Nice. :-D Glad to hear that the HDMI audio has gotten easier. That took me tons of effort to get working and document back when I upgraded to 6.04.


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2012 4:08 am 
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Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2006 3:07 pm
Posts: 339
Does the Hauppauge 1213 WinTV-HVR-2250 PCI-E x1 Dual TV Tuner record two digital channels at once?


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 Post subject: Re: Building new FE/BE
PostPosted: Mon Sep 17, 2012 12:42 pm 
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Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2006 11:14 am
Posts: 1343
Location: Orlando FL
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/ ... r2250.html
according to this site yes can record 2 analog or 2 QAM or 2 ATSC. One clarification is that, there are 2 f-connectors on the back of the card one is for tv the other is for FM radio antenna. I was slightly confused.

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