ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Hauppage WinTV PVR-150 (model 1045)
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 (reman from NewEgg, not sure of model)
ASUS V9520Magic/128MB Geforce FX5200
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200R0 200GB
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton
512 MB
R5A16
This goes in tier 2 for a couple of reasons, but if I'd been less ambitious it would have gone in tier 1. basically the PVR150 is not detected properly out of the box and the remotes that came with these pvr's were the silver model A415-HPG which requires a different /etc/lirc/lircd.conf and some tweaking of ~/.mythtv/lircrc.
Problems: sound was a
nightmare because some stock jumpers were NOT installed on the mother board that kept the rear outputs dead (I have no front outputs and consequently, the jumpers are required to get signal to the rear, how stupid is that? )
To detect and use the pvr-150, I had to download and compile
the 0.3.9 ivtv drivers. Then a simple reboot had them up and running. Pay attention to the /dev/videox used for each card. dmesg | grep ivtv will show you which card was detected first. The first card is /dev/video0, the second is, obviously, /dev/video1.
NOTE: If you are using the PVR-350 for TV-Out then this is critical -- if your pvr-350 is /dev/video0 then your output is to /dev/video16; if your pvr-350 is /dev/video1 then your output is /dev/video17. BTW, this usage of the pvr 350 worked like a champ until I solved some of my other problems, but doesn't support audio out for transcoded files -- you need a working sound card for that...
The Hauppauge A415-HPG remote (look under the batteries for model number) uses a different
/etc/lirc/lircd.conf and you must comment out the lines that don't apply (file is clear on this...)
The /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.nvidia-tvout.sample worked right out of the box....
Conclusion: this configuration was pretty close to tier 1, and if I'd only tried the 1 PVR card (350) it would be up there. THe rest of the problems aren't really knoppmyth problems, and shouldn't really ding the rating. Of course, I know you're looking for "Trivial" installation....
Thanks to you all for a great package. My wife loves it and has already burned up about 20 hours of record time with another pile coming on in the next week
Let me know if you need more details.
Andrew