[mythtvnz] Looking for Hardware

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:04:23 +1300, you wrote:

>I am looking to buy some new hardware..
>
>What I really want is a M350 Enclosure
>http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-enclosure

That box says it only takes 2.5" drives - if you are intending to do
much recording, I think you will find that you need a 1 Tbyte drive or
more.  TV3 1080i HD programs take up to 6 Gibytes per hour to record.
So you probably want a box that takes a 3.5" drive, or preferably two.

I have found that when my MythTV box is busy, having the system
partitions on the same hard disk as recordings makes it slow to
respond to the remote, so I would recommend using two drives if
possible.  Of course, I do have it very busy at times (4 recordings
and two commercial skip tasks running at once).  You may not need that
much.

>and  a Zotac ION Motherboard (vdpau) or cheaper mini-itx with MiniPCIe
>slot for a  http://www.logicsupply.com/products/bcm970012 so it will do
>the graphics work :-) (anyone know a cheap places in NZ to get them
>from.. there is one of the older ones on trademe for $50 at the moment
>but no local supplier as far as I can find)
>
>nicegear have the N330 but its really expensive compared to overseas..
>Is there any place is NZ which sells these types of things?
>
>(yes I know mythtv doesn't have built in support for it yet, but I got a
>HVR2200 6+ months before there was even drivers for it under linux and
>now it works well) (but xbmc does have support for the card now)

Accelerated video drivers are just a bit more difficult to do than
drivers for cards like the HVR2200, as the manufacturers do not seem
to ever publish the chipset datasheets.  So I think it would be very
foolish to buy anything else except a VDPAU capable Nvidia card or
integrated motherboard until drivers for the others are real.

>the problem is overseas places want to charge SOOOO much money for
>sending over.. for example the case.. around $50-$70 from various places
>US and $100US+ to send it to NZ..

Have you looked at http://buyusa.co.nz?  I have never used them, but
they are still around after a couple of years in business, and it
sounds like you can get much better shipping prices that way by
consolidating everything into one shipment.

>I can't find a Nano-ITX with a MiniPCIe slot.. oh well.

I can certainly see the attraction of a mini-itx setup, and I looked
at the options when I was building my mother's MythTV box at
Christmas.  But I could not find the right combination to do what I
wanted.  In the end, I went with a normal PC box (I had a spare lying
around), and put in a good low noise power supply (Zalman ZM500-HP)
and a Gigabyte GA-M85M-US2H motherboard (onboard Nvidia 8200 GPU).
That combination is very quiet.  There is a little fan noise from the
back of the power supply, but I have that pointed away from the people
in the room, and it is virtually unnoticeable.  You do not hear the
motherboard, so the noise that you do hear is just the hard disk when
it is busy.  I was surprised at just how quiet it was - it is rather
quieter than my HTPC case for my MythTV box.  Of course, it is much
bigger than a mini-itx setup.  And some people think that the 8200 GPU
is not quite good enough as it does not do the best deinterlace modes,
but I have not seen any problems with it so far.

http://www.ascent.co.nz//productspecification.aspx?ItemID=355266
http://www.ascent.co.nz//productspecification.aspx?ItemID=378142