[mythtvnz] Looking for modern video input devices (vs PCI cards)

[Stephen Worthington]

On Wed, 23 May 2012 12:47:06 +1200, you wrote:

>It's been a long long time since I built my original system and I'm looking at updating parts of it before moving to MythTV 0.25.
>
>It currently has a PVR-150 and 2 x SkySTAR DVB-S cards, all PCI.
>
>PCI slots are getting pretty rare from my scanning of PBTech and similar sites, so building a new system with my current cards might be hard to do.
>
>So:
>
>What is the current equivalent of a PVR-150? My requirement is for capturing off a SD Sky digital box via S-Video, preferably via a card/adaptor with MPEG2 encoder rather than a frame grabber and CPU encoding. If I can move this to PCIe then finding a new motherboard becomes a lot easier.
>
>Has anyone tried a Hauppage HD-PVR with Sky HD over here?
>
> - Wade

I had no problem finding a modern motherboard with two PCI slots last
week when my old one (Asus M2NPV-VM) became unstable.  For $510.81, I
got these:

  http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=397936
  http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=400101
  http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=402694

The G.Skill DRAM is on the motherboard compatibility list for that CPU
- these days you really need to download the motherboard manual or
compatibility list and only buy listed compatible DRAM.  It has
heatsinks, but they do not extend above the memory module so I had no
problems fitting them under my DVD drive in the case.

I am very happy with the result.  The new quad core CPU with 8 Gibytes
of RAM is so blazingly fast that mythcommflag keeps up in real time
with programmes as they are recording.  It takes one core per
programme to do that, and does not max out that core.  The motherboard
has lots of SATA ports, including two eSATA which is very useful to
me, and also has two USB 3.0 on the back and another two inside, which
I am sure I will find a use for.  My silent Nvidia 220 card has big
heatsinks that overlap onto one of the PCIe x1 slots, which is not a
problem as I do not need that slot.  I put my PVR-500 card (= dual
PVR-150) in one of the PCI slots.  The other PCI slot would allow me
to go back to using my TD-500 dual DVB-T card instead of my current
USB tuners, if I want to do that.

Above the fast (blue) PCIe x16 slot for the video card, there is an
extra position on my case for another card slot which is not used by
the motherboard, so I put my copper SPDIF adapter card from my old
Asus motherboard there and also used its holes to bring out
miscellaneous cables such as my IR blaster.  But I wound up using the
builtin optical SPDIF output once I noticed it was there, as I have
ground loop problems in my audio system attached to the PC and an
optical cable helps with those.

The motherboard seems to work well in terms of power saving - the CPU
does not seem to be running very fast most of the time, but I have yet
to put my power meter on the box to confirm that.  You do need to
check if you have enough power supply though - the CPU will use 125 W
when running flat out.  My old CPU maxed out at 65 W.

Note: My HTPC400 case takes full ATX motherboards like this one.  If
you only have a mini-ATX case, it will not fit in that.