[mythtvnz] New list member - Hardware recommendations

[Paulgir]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:58:15 +1300, Paulgir <paulgir at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:46:20 +1300
>> From: Curtis Walker <sultanoswing at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [mythtvnz] New list member - Hardware recommendations
>> To: MythTV in NZ <mythtvnz at lists.linuxnut.co.nz>
>> Message-ID:
>> 	<CAPzMZFEJi-pjC=DwiDDiD1hUyvGStK3o2Zo3+ZJYx==wP9MViA at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>> On 10 January 2012 18:49, criggie <criggie at criggie.org.nz> wrote:
>>>
>>> > I'd recommend that the boot drive is a small (say 64GB) SSD as it  
>>> makes
>>> > trying out new stuff and rebooting very fast!
>>> > Cheers Douglas
>>>
>>> >> My only comment would be to add a 2nd small hard drive for the OS  
>>> and
>>> >> MySQL. ?Leave the 1TB dedicated to just your recordings.
>>> >> - Wade
>>>
>>> > I have a spare 160 GB drive for the OS .I did consider an SSD but as  
>>> I
>>> > have the 160 I will leave that for the future.
>>> > Paul
>>>
>>> Paul - I agree with Wade, so using the 160 is a great idea for OS.
>>> Personally I'd love some SSDs but they're not reasonably priced yet.
>>> Its only TV - the difference in speed between normal HDD and SSD isn't
>>> going to make any real difference.
>>> You can put a swap file on whichever of your hard drives is fastest, if
>>> you need swap.
>>> Adding more storage later is straightforward... just tell myth that it  
>>> can
>>> store in /myth1, /myth2, ... /mythX ? No need to mess about with raid  
>>> and
>>> md devices.
>>>
>>>
>> Now is a terrible time to purchase a drive - so unless you absolutely
>> have to, recycle that 160GB.
>> In early October, Western Digital and Seagate had a junket in
>> Thailand. WD was buying Hitachi GST and already owns the late Maxtor,
>> and Seagate was buying Samsung. Both were well aware of this and had
>> been for over a year, and appear to have wanted to come to an
>> arrangement as to how they wanted to divide the market between each
>> other, now that there would be effectively only two big hard disk
>> manufacturers.
>> Thanks also to July floods in Thailand they decided what might be best
>> was to arrange for the big OEMs to buy huge loads in bulk to offset
>> the Q4 losses they would have from the purchases otherwise (and shore
>> up for any potential flood damage, which they?d use as the reason for
>> the resulting shortage, despite being fully insured.
>> They held another ?consultation? in Thailand on October 17th and
>> appear to have decided this would make a?brilliant?excuse, and they?d
>> need the funds on tap to refurb the flood-damaged plants afterwards,
>> and agreed with each other to fix the prices, jacking them up
>> dramatically across the board: despite it only taking an estimate of 8
>> weeks to refurbish the machinery after the floods subsided?in fact, it
>> was in full production again by November 30th, well ahead of schedule
>> (they rushed it), although one building was still under 2 foot of
>> water by early December. This was offset ?WD used Hitachi GST?s
>> various un-flooded production facilities to produce the shortfall of
>> WD drives.
>> Effect of the price-fixing was immediate: the price pretty much
>> doubled-to-tripled across the board, sometimes even higher, and
>> retailers started limiting supply. Profits were high and enormous
>> insurance claims had gone in, and the executives appeared to have been
>> in quite a congratulatory mood by mid-December - production was back
>> up to what appears to be full capacity, prices were still flying high,
>> sales were still limited, they?d cherry-picked the last of the
>> pre-flood drives for sale to OEMs at inflated prices, and were selling
>> the brand new drives to the wholesale retail channel for almost twice
>> what they were worth before October. The executives have pocketed a
>> very nice Christmas bonus.
>> There's more: The first lot of drives off the refurbished production
>> lines will very likely be very dodgy, as the equipment was, frankly,
>> repaired and replaced in a hurry and has not had time to properly
>> calibrate. The solution? Increase firmware tolerances and reduce
>> warranties. The OEMs don't want these drives and neither should you if
>> you value your data and the value of your purchase dollar.
>> Don't believe it? Check out the prices of HDD storage compared to 6
>> months ago. And keep an eye out on the warranty times.
>>
>
> I was surprised that the prices weren't lower - so that explains it.
> I wonder what chance of them coming down in the future if WD and Seagate
> have a duopoly?
> I tested the system with an Ubuntu 11.10 live USB stick.I get HDMI video  
> straight off.
> No sound yet via HDMI.I will temporarily install 11.10 and install the  
> Nvidia drivers
> to see if that gives me sound also look at ALSA mixer settings.
> I fitted Arctic Cooler F Pro fans to the case - these are very quiet.
> Cheers
> Paul



I had some trouble installing the OS that was due to the UEFI BIOS not  
liking
a IDE HDD with a SATA converter on it.But I got that sorted.
I've got the graphics card  feeding video and audio down the HDMI cable.
I'm just having a little trouble getting the HVR-2200 to work with the Myth
Backend I installed for testing.

I posted a thread on Ubuntu Forums to see if I get some answers.

Cheers

Paul