Hi,

I am a planning on building a mythtv box and was wondering if the PC I want to use would be capable of being both the front and backend, its specs are below:

AMD 2700
1gb ram
250gb HDD (for capture - OS is on seperate drive)
2x pvr 250

If this is suitable would I still be able to use it for a workstation while Mythtv is running and recording/playing back, i.e. browse net, play music, programming, uncompress files, burn dvd's etc.

Also can anyone suggest where I can get a nice long IRDA cable so I connect it to my serial port and run it about 3 meters to my TV (UK based preferred)

Any help appreciated.

Thanks

yes that system should be quite sufficient for SD recording and playback. which is all you'll get out of the pvr250's anyways. It should be fine doing other things at the same time as recording if you are using the pvr250's as they are hardware based. and don't use much processor time, as long as you are not doing anything extremely I/O intensive. If you are planning on using it as a general workstation you may want to go with a regular distribution and add myth as knoppmyth doesn't come with much of anything other than mythtv. You can of course add stuff with apt, but it won't be installed by default.

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

Xsecrets

Thanks for the reply but what does


mean?

I plan on having one card connected to Sky and the other to a normal aerial both recording at the same time and possibly playing back content to the front end which will be using software and pumped out of my nvidia graphics card (is that what you mean by SD?)

Also one other question has come to mind, can mythtv change channels on the pvr250 or does it have to be done with the remote contol?

Thanks

SD=standard definition. The 250s record standard definition 720x576 (PAL) video, whether via their internal tuners or via their composite or S-video inputs.

Recording takes virtually no CPU at all as the 250s are doing all the heavy lifting.

MythTV can change the channel on the 250's tuner, which should work for your antenna. Not sure how Sky works but if it's like DirecTV here in the States, you'd need to change the satellite box's channels with an IR blaster, and then run its composite or S-video out into the 250's composite or S-video in.

Once again thanks for the reply, I have a solution for changing channels on the Sky box as i have bought a Red-Eye Serial blaster to do this. Can I use the remote that comes with the pvr 250 to navigate in mythtv? if so all I have to do is work out how to extend the cable and I will be in business!

Many thanks

Yes you can use the PVR250's remote to control Mythtv. I use it myself, most of us do. If you use mythtv and install it all from source then you will have to install lirc manually, if you use knoppmyth it is already installed, just read the docs to turn it on.

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ASUS A7N266 Micro-ATX Motherboard
Athlon 2200 processor
512K Kingston PC2100 Memory
MicroAtx Case
2 PVR250's w/remote
eVGA e-GeForce mx4000 (64 Ram with Tv/Out (Svideo))
Lite-on DVD cd-rw combo
120 GB Western Digital

Thats good to know, how long is the remote cable? (I havent got my cards yet...) is it extendable?

About 3 feet and probaly not. All you need to do is get the sensor end out somewhere where it can "see" the remote however.