[mythtvnz] Basic hardware help

[Simon Green]

On 14/03/2008, matthew pearce <pearce.mg at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I was going to ask Jonathan's question. If I do get freeview will a
>  1.2Ghz hack it?

Should be able to, providing you are only going to record one channel
at a time. If you are going to use multirec (in 0.21), then you will
need something a little faster I'd think.

>  Also is it worth getting a internal PCI freeview decoder or should I
>  use a "set top box"?

Definitely get a freeview PCI card. This way the signal will be
digital all the way from the tv station to your computer. If you use a
set top box + analogue encoder you will encounter two negatives: a) an
extra digital - analog - digital conversion which will result in less
quality, and b) you'll need to control the channel changing functions
of the STB, which while can be done can introduce problems.

>  Also do the freeview set top boxes work with the Hauppauge cards. i.e
>  should I get a Hauppauge card and be safe in the knowledge that it
>  will not be junk if I swittch to Freeview.

I have both a Hauppauge (analog) and Technisat Skystar 2 (satellite
freeview). I use the analog card for recording programs of my sky
decoder (and for the uhf channels that aren't on sky). They both work
fine together.

For the reasons mentioned above, I strongly recommend you get a
freeview pci card rather than feed it through an analog encoder.

>  One last thing, is Prime ever going to be on Freeview?

Depends on what media report you read. According to some reports, they
cannot use satellite freeview because of agreements held for certain
sporting rights (rugby). As for terrestrial freeview, it is possible
that they will go on that one day.

>  Do you need to download the epg data from http://epg.pvr.geek.nz/ when
>  you have freeview?

No. Freeview EPG data is obtained from the PCI card itself. You can
disable that and use epg.pvr.geek.nz, but their wouldn't be any
benefit in that.

>  Whats a DVB card?

DVB = freeview (and sky digital for that matter). A DVB card is a card
that can receive DVB signals, such as the technisat skystar 2 PCI
card.

>  While I am here, does anybody know why Celerons are cheaper than Pentiums?

No.

>  It seems like a 120Gb hard drive is way to small it you are using the
>  mythbox full time
>  . I was under the delusion that 120Gb was more than enough. Must have
>  been reading old data.

120GB will be full in no time. My 500GB disk is always full. Am going
to add another disk when 0.21 is release (with storage group support)

>  Thanks again for all the Info/opinions/facts etc

No problems. We are all here to help. We were all new to MythTV at one stage.

>  By the way. So far it has cost me $25 for all the hardware. (HDD cost
>  $25. Rest was given to me or I had lying around)

Awesome.

  -- simon