I just found knoppmyth yesterday and my eyes are about to fall out from reading. I'm still trying to put together the frontend/backend thing but I think I have a pretty good understanding of a stand alone set top box.

I am trying to decide whether I want to build a box based on a HDTV card or a standard reciever card, such as the Hauppauge 350.

I do not have any hdtv capable TVs. The only reason I am considering HDTV is that my standard cable signal is poor. I would like to get HDTV off air and drop the cable bill. Since I don't need the HDTV quallity, could I save the files in lower quality? Would that save me any processing power? Would an AMD 1600 be sufficient for watching live TV?

Thanks for all the support, this is a great site.

mike

no you can't record hdtv in a lower resolution since it comes straight off the air already encoded. so anytime you are looking at hdtv your proc requirements remain the same.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

That's what I was afraid of. So if I want to use HDTV I will need a 3Ghz processor an 300GB of disks.

Thanks
mike

I'd say build a MythTV with a PVR150 (about $80) and some spare hardware and see if you like it. Once you get proficient at it, you can save your pennies and get an HD tuner and some better hardware, but there is no point until you are ready to buy an HDTV. You can always use the PVR150 as a spare SD tuner in the new system, so nothing will go to waste.

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Currently running: R5.5, HD5000 x 2, PVR150, Athlon 64 3000+, Chaintech VNF4, 1GB RAM, 2 x 250GB in LVM, MSI NX6200TC -> AA 9A60 -> HDTV

Good advice, I'll begin looking for a 150.

Thanks
mike

In the U.S., $99 at Circuit City or the like, so they're pretty easy to find. You can pronably knock $10 off of that with some careful shopping online. Just make sure you're compare apples to apples. The MCE ones run around $65-70 but don't have a remote, and the MCE ones that come bundled with a USB remote run about the same as the non-MCE ones.

According to this recent post, you can get one for $59 at Compusa....

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... highlight=

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Currently running: R5.5, HD5000 x 2, PVR150, Athlon 64 3000+, Chaintech VNF4, 1GB RAM, 2 x 250GB in LVM, MSI NX6200TC -> AA 9A60 -> HDTV