[mythtvnz] Hardware build, compatibility questions

[Steve Hodge]

On 7/17/06, AlanP <alan.p@orcon.net.nz> wrote:
> GFX -- Gigabyte FX5200 - $87

I've had a couple of these and they are great for MythTV.

> I'll be using PVR150s (hardware MPEG2) and Skystar2s (I'm willing to assume
> hardware MPEG2 on these, considering Technisat pimp them as TV cards.)

DVB cards don't have an mpeg encoder - but the broadcast stream itself
is mpeg encoded and they just dump that to disk. So you don't need
much CPU for these cards. Note, however, that MythTV no longer
supports writing PS (program stream) mpeg files from DVB cards, only
TS (transport stream). That means you can't just write the files to
DVD (as you can with the PVR150s if they are set to output PS), you
have remux them first.

> Seagate 300G - $216

I just bought a Seagate ST3320620AS SATAII 320GB 16MB for $190 from
ExtremePC (http://www.extremepc.co.nz/product_info.php?cPath=120_122&products_id=893&osCsid=7e9b82970f9f3944d2cff651f5ef0723).
It's in my Windows desktop, but I moved the old 160GB ST3160827AS to
my MythTV machine without any problems. The motherboard doesn't have
SATA, but I got a $50 DSE XH8269 SATA/PATA RAID card which works fine
under Linux (the RAID capabilities probably wouldn't work - I haven't
tried them).

> My major question is hardware compatibility. Will Debian play nice with the
> Asrock, and will the SATA-2 hdd be readable?

Just make sure the SATA controller on the motherboard is supported (it
probably is). SATA-2 drives are backwards compatible with SATA-1.
Might be worth checking that the sound chip is also support though I'd
be very suprised if that's a problem.

Steve