I'm building my mythtv box shopping list. Haven't bought anything yet..
I want to record HDTV streams and analog streams also. Might re-encode Mpeg2&4 streams to H.264. It will be both front & backend (unless its too loud I'll buy a separate frontend). I also subscribe to several daily video podcasts (Diggnation, CNN, Ntnl Geographic) which adds to CPU overhead. What would you guys change and why?

-ABIT AB9 QuadGT LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard
-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model
-HDHomeRunâ„¢ Networked Digital TV Tuner (Dual ATSC ip Streams)
-Hauppauge PVR-150 (For analog OTA capture)
-3 Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA
-Antec Performance One P180 Silver cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower
-SeaSonic S12 Energy Plus SS-550HT ATX12V / EPS12V 550W Power
-LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Model LH-20A1H-185 - OEM
-Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)


What would you change / recommend? Why
Any potential caveats you see? 64 bit issues? incompatible/or difficult to configure components?

What is the source of your HDTV signal? Over the air or cable? If cable, so you have a settop box with firewire output? Are you planning to receive with your HD Homerun? Satellite? (forget it) Verizon FIOS or AT&T U-Verse? (forget it)

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I wouldn't get a quad. It's not like it gives 4x the power in real-world situations. Considering that HD playback is fine on the Dragon 1.0 spec (AMD 32000 single-core-whatever 939 pin), you don't need anything more than a Core2 Duo or AMD X2.
Downloading a couple of podcasts isn't going to use much CPU.

Transcoding and commflag DOES use CPU. But with an X2 or Core2Duo, you've got plenty.

Remember that the Quad is basically a marriage of the Core2Duo technology AND the Dual-Core (Pentium-D). The Pentium-D was hot and wasted power. I just buried mine last week. I was working along on my desktop, then click! It just died. Anyway, that's my take on the Quad.

For podcasts, see the thread here on "podget". It's great. Command-line driven, from crontab. Set and forget.

For your hard drives... nice! But at this point, I'd not recommend trying to use it all. The "old way" is to use an LVM to marry two or more volumes, and mount as the /myth directory. But with the upcoming "storage groups" feature in MythtTV, you'll be able to just add disks and tell Myth about them. If I were you, I'd just use two disks: a portion of one for the root volume, leave the rest unused. Then the other 750 drive for /myth. Once "storage groups" are here, I'd then add the unused portion of the first drive, and then add the 3rd drive. If you go with LVM now, you're locked in. You'd never be able to get all of your stuff off, and you'd always be vulnerable to one of the 3 drives failing and losing all 2TB of stuff. Well, you'd be able to move it once 2TB drives are invented, and come down below $200 so you can buy one and move all of your stuff onto it...

You need a CPU cooler. The stock one won't do. Get a Zalman or something similar. May need to see how much room you've got.

I don't see a video card... You need a video card. The Dragon 1.1 spec was an nVidia-based 6200 with DVI and VGA out. You're not going to play HD out of the pvr 150....

Back to Liv2Cod's question: If you are capturing TV via OTA (like I am), you'll have little/no use for the analog capture card. Everything here is digital OTA. Well, there are a few analog stations left, like home shopping network and fuzzy stations from Canada. But if your area is digital, and you've got a good signal, your analog viewing is going to be less and less relevant.

Re: 64-bit issues?
There aren't any issues. The hardware may be capable of 64-bit, but we're running 32-bit Linux and MythTV. Just like with the Windows world, just because you CAN run a 64-bit OS, doesn't mean it's a good idea. KnoppMyth is not a 64-bit distro.