[mythtvnz] (no subject)

[Graeme Woollett]

Hello Matthew
In my opinion
> How does this hardware sound for a mythbox
>
> Dell optiplex GX50 comprised of
> -1.2Ghz Celeron
>   
A 1.2ghz celeron is a tad on the light side for transcoding jobs, with a 
120GB drive you will be doing a lot of this...
> -120gb hard drive
>   
120 GB is on the small side, allow 2-3gb/hr for pvr150 mpeg2 or 
~3,5GB/hr for freeview.  I have a 500G and have still managed to run out 
of space.
> -DVD reader/writer
> -256Mb of Ram. (would there be much gained if I had 512?)
>   
256MB for a backend/frontend box isn't enough, 1GB is comfortable
> I hope to add to the above (all of which ive got except for some extra ram)
> -A Hauppauge Win tv PVR 150/250/350/500 (which would be the best for
> watching free to air tv (no freeview/sky)
>   
I really wouldn't bother with analog TV, Freeview is far superior in 
quality.  You can even record 2 channels  (multirec mythtv 0.21) with 
with one DVB card as long as the channels are on the same transponder.  
I used to have 2 PVR150's, they were good, but now that I've changed to 
2 DVB cards I'd never go back.
> -Some sort of PCI NVidia graphics card with s-video out do I can
> change it to composite. (is this necessary. The Optiplex has a onboard
> graphics card and it seems as though you can get VGA to S-Video
> converters. However currently knoppmyth will not start X. I havent
> tried very hard yet though.
>
>   
You would be lucky to find a nvidia PCI card with TV out (stick with 
nvidia, it is well supported under linux), if you did, you may find that 
the quality of the video would disappoint.
I'd buy new hardware, typically for around $700 worth of bits you will 
get a result far superior to a DVD recorder for the same outlay.
Hope this helps.

Graeme