[mythtvnz] Price estimate for new system

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 11:07:18 +1300, you wrote:

>I have lurked here for ages but I have to admit that WAF has been pretty
>good with the TiVo she bought a few years back so I have not used MythTV
>for quite a while.
>
>Now that her TiVo has died we have to decide on an alternative which will
>keep the WAF up.
>
>Has anyone here recently built or priced a MythTV setup with the following:-
>
>(I have no problem building it and following advice and instructions)
>
>
>   - Combined Frontend/Backend to sit under a TV
>   - Reasonably small form factor

Have you been able to live within the storage limits of a TiVo?  It
so, they you can probably get a small form factor box.  But if you
will be wanting to add more hard drives, you really only want to use a
very small box for a pure frontend.  If you need to use a larger box,
is there room to put it out of the way behind the TV rather than under
it?  Only the IR remote sensor really needs to be visible for
operating a MythTV system, and you can use one on a long enough cable
so that you can stick it on the TV somewhere inconspicuous.

>   - At least two tuners (DVB-T) (Should I use HDHomerun?)
>   - Decent storage

So how much storage do you think you will need or want?  If you are
willing to pay, there are good 4 Tbyte hard drives now.  But 2-3 Tbyte
is where the cost per Gbyte is best.  Remember that the drive your
MythTV system and database runs on needs to be a performance drive -
the database accesses for the scheduler cause heavy disk access.  So
you do not want to use a "green" type drive for your system drive.  If
you are planning on having more than one drive (recommended), then a
"black" performance type drive for the system drive is best, and it
can also be used for recordings.  These days, some people seem to be
using a small SSD for the system drive, but I think that is still a
bit overkill (and expensive).  Drives used for recording and storage
only can be the cheaper green drives, but bare in mind that they will
likely be running 24/7, so watch out for the very cheap drives that
say they are not capable of lasting when doing that.

>   - Fairly quiet
>   - Wireless (I have a usb wireless dongle)
>   - Remote (wireless keyboard and mouse is acceptable if recommended)
>
>Any good advice is also appreciated.

The best price would be buying second hand.  My mother's box is based
on a Gigabyte GA-M85M-US2H motherboard that uses an Nvidia 8200
chipset with builtin GPU (fanless).  That does everything that is
needed for MythTV, and does away with the need for a separate Nvidia
card.  Unfortunately, Nvidia has not made chipsets with builtin GPUs
since around the time my mother bought her system in December 2009,
but a second hand motherboard like that in Micro ATX format is a
excellent way to build a small MythTV box.