i just did some calculations and seeing how i am paying ~$40/mo for the cable boxes and dvr i have, i thought this is getting ridiculous.

i just recently built myself a new rig and now have a good portion of another computer just sitting in my office, so i may want to try knoppmyth out if you people would answer a couple of questions for me. i have built 75+ machines over the years for myself, businesses and friends so i am familiar with hardware, but i have always used some flavor of windows, so i am a total noob to linux or any nix.

first of all, the hardware i have now collecting dust is a msi i865pe based skt 478 (p4) motherboard, a 2.8C Northwood P4, a nice copper hsf combo that is not too loud, a large, full size atx case, 350W antec psu, a spare dvd-rw. so for this rig i am missing a video card, a tuner, hard drive and ram.

i have read that all i need is a geforce 4 series card, is this all that is needed? like a geforce 4 ti4200 or will the mx line be sufficient?

for hdd, i will probably pick up something in the neighborhood of 200GB(pata) depending on what is on sale.

i will be getting 1GB of pc3200

tuner - not sure which one to get. advise please

i am assuming i will need some type of network connection for t.v. listings and the room i am going to put this into does not have cat5 going into it, so could you recommend me a wifi b/g adapter, either pci or usb that knoppmyth supports as i already have a wifi b/g setup at home.

i will need a remote, please advise.

now the tricky part - this needs to be as easy as the current dvr for my wife. she doesn't mind spending the $$$ on the current setup because it is easy to use, but i don't like to spend an extra $500/year to the cable company. she can learn what she needs to quickly as long as it is no harder than a typical dvr/dvd/vcr setup.

i do not want hd, so just standard definition will be sufficient.

also, i do run the audio through my denon receiver, but understand it will just be through rca connectors. should i get a different soundcard? my m/b does have onboard sound and optical and coax digital out but i never used it before...even in windows so please advise here also.

last, i would like the ability to watch a show and record at the same time or watch a show that is recorded and record 2 shows, so i am assuming i would need 2 tuners?

also i should note that the video will be displayed on a older 55" interlaced tv via s-video(hopefully)

thanks in advance for your time and patience,
bob

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BF2 / SF Ram Usage

the 4mx series is the least you would want, but I would highly recommend the fx5200 they are still pretty cheap, and there are alot of fanless models, and they seem to have better tvout components if you decide to use svid.

512Mb is probably enough ram unless you are just wanting to be able to use this machine for something else in case this fails.

To make things easy on yourself make sure the HD is PATA.

As far as tuners the pvr500 is going to be the cheapest option that gets you the two tuners you want, however they do not come with a remote, so you'll have to look at another type of remote.

I Know ATI makes a remote that works, but there are many options, and I haven't really had any experience with non tvcard remotes.

Most likely your onboard audio will be fine. the optical spdif from my Abit AS8 works fine passing the audio to my Onkyo reciever.

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Xsecrets

Read the Tier 1 and Tier 2 Hardware Recommendations where people have posted information on their working configurations. Use the "Search" function to look up individual components. Finally see this set of wiki pages for more information: http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=HardwareConfigs

I can help with a few of your questions.

First of all, visit the "Tier 1" and "Tier 2" sections of this forum for lots of advice on hardware that works well with KnoppMyth. Below, I'll tell you what worked for me.

Since you are new to Linux, expect to spend some time learning your way around. During this process, remember that Google is your friend. There are lots of helpful FAQs, forums, tutorials out there, but it often takes some time to wade through it all. Setting up KnoppMyth to meet all your needs will likely take some time, but once you get it going, it will be solid (I have had a box running R5A15.1 for 9 months and I haven't had to touch it). This forum and the wiki (http://knoppmywiki.org) will be your best resources. This is just from my experience. R5B7 is much more mature than what I originally started with. I haven't installed it yet, but I installed R5A30 several times on a test box, and it went quite smoothly.

Anyway, back to your questions. If you are only doing SD, and you have a P4 2.8C, then you can use just about any graphics card you want that has the TV ouputs you need (most likely S-Video). I personally have a GeForce2 GTS 64MB that works great. Although, at this point, a GeForceFX 5200 will be as cheap as anything.

For what you want to do, you will need two tuners. If you are talking about SD NTSC, then you have two choices. You can buy simple frame grabbers (cheap, and you should have enough CPU for this), or you can get cards with a hardware encoder (more expensive, takes load off your CPU). I have no experience with frame grabbers, so I can't give a recommendation there. I use a PVR-150 from Hauppauge, and it works great (it also comes with a remote control and an IR blaster to change channels on your cable box). If you are patient then, you can get a PVR-150 for $70 or $80 after rebate.

KnoppMyth is easy to use, so your wife is likely to be happy with it. I would strongly suggest that you don't let your wife or other family members use it until you have it set up the way you like and don't plan to make any more changes. Once they start using it, you will have a hard time finding a chance to work on it if you want to tweak something.

thanks for the info. if 512MB is sufficient, then 512 is what i will get. i was just going to sell of this stuff but thought, what the hell, maybe i can save some $$$$ as i am a cheap guy...

as far as the tuners, would it be better to get 2 pvr150s or 1 pvr500? also, Red5, my goal is to get rid of the cable boxes altogether. am i headed down the right track to do this?

and yes i do plan on setting it all up in my office and getting it tweaked so when it goes into the room, i won't need to mess with it ;D

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BF2 / SF Ram Usage

two pvr150's will get you the remote, but one 500 will be cheaper, and only take one pci slot. there's not clear answer to that question.

the only problem you will run into with getting rid of the cable boxes is that you won't get the digital channels. like HBO Showtime etc.

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Xsecrets

thanks for the info. no probs on using 2 pci slots if i get a remote as my board has 5, so i will still have enough room if i need a 1394 card, a wifi card, etc. is the pvr150 remote good enough to handle everything knoppmyth does?

also, no problem getting rid of the cable box because i don't get any of the premium channnels, so that is good.

one other question i have is, say in a year or two, is there any timeframe when all cable will have to be HD? if so, will it come over the cable? and if it does, will it be encrypted? if the answer is yes, how will knoppmyth and the tuners deal with that? also, if this does come to fruition, would i be better just going with 1GB or ram now ove 512MB?

last, what type of size does 1hr of sd video with knoppmyth take up at say, 80% qualilty (if there is something like that, equal to above average qualtiy)? is there a way to convert it to xvid x264?

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BF2 / SF Ram Usage

yes the remote handles pretty much everything, but they are not the best remotes in the world. What I did was get a harmony remote to replace the physical remote from the pvr250 I have and still use the same ir receiver with the added benifit that it controls every device I use tv/stereo/dvd/myth

no one can answer this just yet. The studios/cable companies don't want you to be able to use something like mythtv, so if they get their way you will be SOL when the time comes. My machine handles hdtv fine with 512MB ram.


SDTV is usually between 1.5 and 2.2 GB/hr depending on your capture settings. HDTV is somewhere between 5 to 7GB/hr depending on the resolution (720p/1080i) There currently is no way to convert it to x264 (well not entirely true, but the simple fact of the matter is that your 2.8G pIV will never do it fast enough to be usefull. On HD where it would make the most sense it takes upwards of a full day to transcode one show.)

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thanks for all the answers. i guess i need to find out when hd will be mandated to see if i would save any $$$ over the time period i have left....

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BF2 / SF Ram Usage

good luck with that. There are no mandates just yet. Nothing is firm on that the best you will get is some educated guesses. all depends on how loud the people speak and how much money the "man's" lobbyist can throw at the crooks (erm politicians)

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

Xsecrets