Hello, I'm looking to build a PVR using MythTV and I was hoping I could run my proposed hardware setup by you guys to see if any problems could be seen.

Like I said I want to use MythTV and the box is to sit in the living room. I'm planning to watch TV, record TV, and watch DVDs. I'd also like to listen to Internet radio with the box.

Here's the hardware I was thinking about buying for this project:
ASUS Pundit (ok to use on-board TV out?)
Celeron 2.0 GHz
512 MB DDR333
120 GB HD
16x DVD drive
WinTV PVR 250 (for encoding and IR remote)
802.11b NIC

I've heard mixed results about the Pundit.
- Issue 1: Supposedly its cramped in the back and it may be difficult to get the PCI cards into the case.
- Issue 2: Pundit TV out creates black borders around picture because the chipset does not support overscan

Can anyone confirm / deny these issues? Is anyone familiar with other issues with the hardware I'm looking at using? Are there perhaps alternative hardware that may be a better option?

Thanks for any advice anyone can offer. With costs between $400 and $500 I just want to make sure that any hardware I buy won't have to be returned.

Thanks in advance,
jpbarto

If you plan on doing video over your network connection, you very well may not be happy with the throughput of 802.11b. On the other hand if all you are going to use the network for is to do updates, and access the system in house, it should be fine.

I will let others address the Pundit board questions.

I seem to recall someone having pictures online of what he had to do to get one of the cases to accept the video capture card, just a bit of carving you can probably do with a dremel or a nibbler. I don't know if it's the same case, or not. For my secondary system, I don't think event hat work would allow me to get a full height card in the case. Minuette cases really are not designed for full hight cards. I may find out in the months to come however.

-Rusty

_________________
Master:
- AMD 1800XP on a MSI KT4V motherboard, via KT400 bios
- 120 G Segate Baracuda /, /cache, /myth, swap
- 200 G Segate Baracuda /myth/tv
- 3 Haupauge! WinTV PVR250s
- 19" Daewoo Monitor (1280x1024 ni)

Well I know it's tight, but I know a couple of people who use them, and they made it fit. As for the comment about the 802.11b it is true it is not good for doing video over the wire, however if you get the right 802.11b card it will be configured out of the box where no 802.11g cards will be, and most don't even have drivers, or the drivers are in early development.

As for the overscan problem the pundit tvout does have overscan, but you have to install the sis binary drivers, which is not a big deal, since they can be installed via apt-get after adding a line to your sources.list file.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I don't have any plans to do streaming video over the wireless, I was only intending to use it for internet radio streams and for MythTV to provide tv showtime listings.

Also, I forgot to mention: I'll be using the Gentoo distro for the system if that will impact anything (doubt it).

Thanks again,
jpbarto

Well you may find this an odd question, but if you are planning on using gentoo why are you posting in the knoppmyth forums?

I think my answer would have to be unfamiliarity. I've been researching the topic for only a few days and I haven't found any MythTV forums yet. So when I came across this forum it seemed like the best option at the moment for discussing hardware choices.

No offense intended, I'm just kind of going everywhere / anywhere that is discussing MythTV or Linux-based PVRs in general to get an idea of what my options are (both hardware and software wise).

well it's not a problem, but if you are using gentoo, the sis comment I made about being able to apt-get is not correct, although you can still download and use the binary drivers. Also I haven't used gentoo, but it seems to be very current, so it may have more support for some of the 802.11g cards, but not sure about that. I just have never had a machine that I felt like spending a week waiting on everything to compile for.