I'm looking forward to building a mythtv box (never done it before). It'll be an Athlon 2600+ based system with a 120 gig drive. Keep in mind this PC will be used exclusively for my PVR. In order for the wife to go along with this, it has to be easy to use. Judging by the very cool looking screenshots, that shouldn't be a problem.

My goal is to have all the output -- both GUI and captured shows appear on the TV. Once I get it up and running, I don't even want a monitor to be hooked up to the box at all since it'll be sitting in a drawer in our entertainment center in the living room

I'd like some hardware suggestions from you pros actually running MythTV.

1. What video capture card do you all recommend? I was thinking about the WinTV-PVR 250 (onbaord encoding chip) or the WinTV-PVR. I think having a video encoding chip onboard would be cool, but if that is cost prohibitive, I don't care givin the speed of the CPU I'll be using.

1a. Will any capture board be able to use digital cable instead of the 125 channel analog or is this not supported yet?

2. Beyond the capture card, I'll need a video board with TV output (otherwise how does the MythTV GUI get to the TV)? Which do you find gives a high quality picture on the TV? I think S-Video Out would give the highest quality?

2a. Will I require anything special to use my DVDROM to watch DVDs (not rip and transcode, just right off the DVDROM) in this setup?

Thanks in advance and sorry if these are newbie questions.

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.

on my system the entire install was done with only a tv hooked up.

well the pvr250's do make things nice expecially if you are planing to use knoppmyth.

well this is supported, but you'll either have to use a irblaster to forward the channel changes to the digital box or some boxes have a serial connection for that purpose. you would have to research your box and find out, and this would involve a conciderable amount of additional configuration.

none of the tv cards will tune in digital cable.

well from what I've been told the pvr350 has the best quality tv-out. I personally use the svideo tv-out from my onboard video. I use the chaintek 7nif2 motherboard, and it has onboard video(with tv-out), lan, and sound which I use.

the other option is to run it through a scan converter and create custom modelines if you have an hdtv set.

well you won't be able to play dvds or rip them for that matter (encrypted ones anyways which is all commercial movies.) out of the box, but it's not too hard to enable it, it's just that it is to be nice let's say a legal grey area.

Thank you very much for the detailed reply. As I understand it, the PVR-350 will not dump the GUI outthe TVOUT. That's why I thought it'd be nice to have the encoding onboard, and then use the CPU to decode/export to TV.

So, MythTV cannot play DVDs.... that's one of the main reasons I want to build an all-in-one box (TV/DVD). My TV has only one S-Video in and the PVR will take it... thought I read that Myth does play DVDs...?

Taken from the main page: " A DVD player / ripper module. Make perfect backups, or transcode down to smaller file sizes."

Any suggestions on an APG video board with high quality S-Video out?

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.

you've got it backwards the pvr350 will not dump the command line boot sequence to tv. it works once the gui comes up.

I didn't say mythtv won't do it or that knoppmyth won't do it for that matter I just said it is not supported and it doesn't work out of the box. And this is just for commercial DVD's if you go make a home movie it will rip and transcode that for you with no problems and no extra configuration.

you will not find any linux based free software that will do this as a supported feature, at least not one that has any sort of presence in the US as this is more or less illegal under the DMCA.

well the only one I have used is the onboard svidio out of the nforce2 from my motherboard, and it's pretty good, but if you are going with the pvr350 I would try to use that, because from what I've heard it's the best svid out anyone has ever seen.