[mythtvnz] Hardware Recommendations

[Stephen Worthington]

On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:50:30 +1300, you wrote:

>Hey everyone,
>
>Thanks for all your responses.  You've all been very helpful.
>
>I've found a DVI to component cable, so I'll get an NVidia card with
>VPDAU and DVI output and connect to the component sockets on the TV.
>The video card will have HDMI as well, so I'm future proofed there.
>
>I've done a bit of searching about the TBS 6980 tuner card.  Mixed
>messages about it working with MythTV, but I'll make sure I can return
>it if it is not suitable.  This link says it should work
>http://www.tbsdtv.com/english/product/6980.html.  That page even has a
>MythTV logo on it.  I just really like the idea of having both tuners
>on the same card so it takes up less space inside the PC.  I'll make
>sure the PC I choose has room for 2 individual tuners just in case.

Problem: The drivers listed on that page are for 2.6.32 kernel.  The
current kernel in Ubuntu is 2.6.31 (2.6.31-20 at the moment), until
Mythbuntu 10.4 comes out at the end of April.  So you may well run
into the same problem I seem to have at present with my new my TeVii
S470 DVB-S2 card, which is that the drivers seem to upgrade the Video
4 Linux version (V4L), and this breaks things.  I can not get MythTV
to use my three DVB-T tuners with the new drivers for installed.  They
are usable in Kaffeine, but MythTV fails to tune them.  And w_scan
does not work, saying it is incompatible with the new version.

I am just trying out Mythbuntu 10.04 beta1 today, to see if the
pre-release MythTV 0.23 works with the new kernel and will run all my
tuners at once.  But I am having problems getting it to work (it
really is rather alpha-ish, with various things obviously broken).
Mythbuntu 10.04 beta1 is using the 2.6.32-16 kernel currently.

>I know it would be preferable to have a backend system in the garage,
>or in the "Harry Potter" cupboard under the stairs, but while I'm
>still dealing exclusively with SD content, I think I'll just combine
>them in to one box in the TV cabinet.  As I understand it, when I
>start dealing with HD content I'll need a gruntier box and maybe more
>storage.
>
>Now I just have to find the right PC and case to put it all in.

The basic problem with building a MythTV box is noise.  One intended
for a bedroom needs to be extremely quiet.  One in a lounge needs only
to be quiet.  I built one for my mother just before Christmas, and I
kept it fairly quiet by using a Gigabyte M85M-US2H motherboard that
had builtin Nvidia 8400GS video (with no fan), and a Zalman ZM500-HP
power supply.  The result is that the loudest sound from the box is
the hard disk (Seagate ST31000528AS) when it is doing something.  The
CPU fan on the Athlon II X2 245 processor and the power supply fan
fade into the background in the lounge.  The fans on normal Nvidia
graphics cards are rather noisy and would be quite noticeable and
annoying, which is why I also got an Asus "silent" model 8400GS card
for my own MythTV box in my bedroom when I updated it to use VDPAU.
The Gigabyte M85M-US2H motherboard does seem to still be available
from a small number of NZ retailers, but they may have just forgotten
to update their databases as it has disappeared from Ascent's web
site.  I would recommend it for MythTV boxes.

The 8400GS GPU is a little underpowered for using the higher
deinterlace modes, but I have not personally found the lower modes to
be a problem.  Note that there seem to have been two versions of
8400GS chips - the M85M-US2H uses the newer much better version, as
does my silent 8400GS:

  http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=9384472

The new version 8400GS chips seem to actually be derived from the 9000
series GPUs, rather than the 8000 series.

Warning: The M85M-US2H motherboard has DVI-D and HDMI outputs only.
There is also a D-Sub (VGA) connector for analogue monitors, but I am
not sure if you can get VGA to component converters in NZ, and if you
can they will not be cheap.  The HDMI supports audio over HDMI.

The Asus silent 8400GS card has DVI-I, D-Sub (VGA) and S-Video
outputs, and comes with an S-Video to component converter cable (which
I have never tried using).  Since the component out is via an S-Video
connector, I would presume that it will produce YPbPr component
signals, not RGB.  But I could not find anything in the documentation
to say for sure.  I am using it with a DVI to HDMI cable, and running
the sound from the PC sound card over SPDIF to my hifi system, so I
can not say if it supports audio over DVI->HDMI.

A number of people seem to be waiting for the arrival of silent GT220
based cards, which should provide all the GPU needed to use the
highest deinterlace modes at a fairly cheap price.  Given the
relatively low price of the silent 8400GS card, you could just get one
of them and see if it works for you, with the option of updating later
to a GT220 based one if lower deinterlace modes are a problem.

>Thanks
>
>David Kirk