[wplug] ? MythTV, PVR350 and Install Fest

[Patrick Wagstrom]

On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 06:36 -0500, Sawders, Daryl wrote:
> I'm really trying to get together the components to build a MythTV setup.
> 
> The reason I'm posting here, is that I hope to be able to bring the components to an InstallFEST.
> 
> I'm looking at the WinTV-PVR-350 card.  Any thoughts PRO and CON ??
> 
> I'm also confused on which version of Linux is "best" for building a MythTV box...
> Yeah, I know...  this is a loaded question.  Please try to limit replies to less than 5000 words and use small words  ;-)
> 
> Please let me know your thoughts.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>    - Daryl -
> 
> sawders at ppg.com

Unless you really, really, really need it, do not go with the WinTV PVR
350 card.  The only advantage of the 350 over the 250's and 150's is
that it has an MPEG decoder on it - for those costs you're better off
getting a WinTV PVR 500, which as dual tuners on it.  I ran MythTV for
two years on a 700MHz machine doing software decoding from a WinTV PVR
250 and it worked just fine.  If you're going to output to an actual TV,
your best bet is to pick up an nVidia card in the 5000 or 6000 series,
preferably without a fan (I picked up a fanless 6600 with 256MB ram for
about $100).  You'll have better luck getting TV output, be able to
output more than just MPEG video, and overall have an easier experience.

As far as distros, Fedora with Jarod's walk through is pretty straight
forward.  KnoppMyth is great if you don't plan on using the box for
anything else.  I do MythTV on Ubuntu x86_64, and while it works, it was
a little while coming.

There are a moderate number of folks in WPLUG who have experience with
Myth, let us know if you're coming to the next install fest and we may
be able to help out.

--Patrick