AlexH

A quick update on my MythTV situation:

It is now almost working.

Basic specs are this:
Asus Pundit-R
Celeron 2.4GHz
160gb hard drive
PVR-350 (although I’m not using the TV out)
Dual layer DVD burner
802.11b wireless (for the channel listings and web admin, no streaming)
512mb RAM

It’s almost working to my satisfaction.

I spent a bit more that necessary to get the PVR-350, but it gives me a lot of expandability in the future, and I could take the card out and put it in another machine, and use the Pundit-R as a frontend only. I can definitely see myself needing more disk space in the future. I had to aggressively prune my listings because I was running out of disk space. Now I only record 2 rerun episodes of CSI, Law and Order, Family Guy, etc.

The one *big* problem is that MPEG playback isn’t working properly on the ATI TV out. It’s not just the TV out though, it’s the software libraries, because when I was using the PVR-350’s TV out, it was working just fine. Now I’m getting weird glitches where the sound drops out and the video plays at about 2x. It happens when I convert to MPEG4 as well, so that’s why I’m convinced it’s either the PVR-350 generating buggy MPEGs, or the software decoding it.

But DVD playback is really nice, I haven’t tried any games yet but MAME is definitely going to get installed…