Hi Everyone,

I'm going to be building six new mythtv boxes for various friends, none of them technical. I don't want to spend a lot of time managing them, I just want basic reliable boxes.

They will be single tuner systems with 200GB hard drives, using PVR 250s. I'd like some thoughts on readily available and attractive cases and matching mobos and power supplies. Ideally I'd like an out of the box experience.

Thanks for your input.

-Jeff

Any way I can become your friend?

I know that this doesn't answer your original question, but it's something I've been pondering while thinking I'd like to do the same for my parents; how do you plan on supporting it? No matter how good/stable the install is, I can still see the possibility of an occasional restart. Heck, what happend when the power goes out, or your fiend accidentally turns off the machine? It should come back up just fine, but there may be a correputed mysql table, or fsck may go into interactive mode at boot time...

Will your friends be responsible for renewing their own zap2it subscription every three months?

Are you planning on having ssh access to each of the boxes via an always-on net connection? This could make those inevitable tech support calls that much easier.

I don't have a solution to these issues, just wondering if you've though through them in your plans to roll out mythtv boxes to non-geeks.

_________________
R5Fxx

Home-Brewed Mythic Dragon Clone
200GB WD IDE /myth
2x250GB WD IDE (lvm) /myth/tv

Look around, I just did a pricing exercise for someone back at the beginning of the March or the end of February for a low cost box, but all the components were also picked to be as trouble free and well proven as possible.

You're also not providing much in the way of requirements. What is the budget? What are the priorities? Did you look at the wiki page on picking components?

The goal is to build basic, affordable boxes. The primary function will be the TV feature set. The price goal is sub $600. Asetically something like the Antec Sonata case would be preferable.

As far as support goes, I've had relatively good luck. I built a system for my father over the last year, which he had shipped to a small island in the caribbean. He does have a low speed cable modem link. With the exception of a few reboots he has been able to use the system all year without any major problems.

Locally, the users will be on cable modems in the event I need to SSH in, but to be honest, with the exception of guide problems, I've had very good luck with KnoppMyth. I haven't experienced fsck and database corruption problems on any of the systems I've worked with, even with the occasional power outage we see here.

I have looked around at the other resources and will continue to do so, my concern is that some of the more popular mobos have gone out of production and also I wanted to potentailly take advantage of any new driver support in the latest release.

I am located on a small caribbean island and I'll need to mail order all the parts. I don't have much flexibility to pick up extra parts of substitute things, so I need it all buttoned down on the initial order. I'll keep reviewing the other resources as well. Thanks.

-Jeff

BTW - Here is the pricing excercise I mentioned. All the parts were still "In Stock" when I did this less than three weeks ago. http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3753

As of now, newegg no longer carries the PVR 250 (with the exception of MCE).... however Amazon.com and Buy.com do (though the 980 is out of stock)

And the 7NIF2 board has been displaced by the 7NIF4, though you can find the 7NIF2 refurb

I haven't yet bought the components, but I've been keeping tabs on everything. I figure once the PVR250 comes back in stock I'll order.