[Tfug] Myth/HTPC

[Jeff Breadner]

Steven Bowers wrote:
> Looking for some general feedback on the specs for a HTPC/Myth box. I 
> have an "old" Intel SAI2 motherboard, dual 1Ghz P3, 2GB of RAM and lots 
> of free PCI slots. How viable is this for a HTPC? After reading the Myth 
> TV site it sounds like I would have to invest in a whole new P4 system, 
> especially if I wanted to do anything with HD content. Before I did that 
> I thought I would see what are the current experiences of others. 
> Currently I'm interested in using a HTPC system for hulu.com and some 
> other streaming sites, maybe recording some HD from OTA channels, 
> watching some mpeg and other material downloaded of the net and general 
> web browsing.
>
>   

I run a single-core Athlon XP 2100+ @ 1.733GHz, 512MB RAM as the
mythbackend server, plus another single-core 1.7GHz Pentium 4, 256MB RAM
box as a 1TB file server, gigabit connected.  I have a single capture
card, and play back to up to 3 front ends at once without any issue.
You could probably get away with less hardware, but I'm really looking
forward to getting a dual-core server to speed up commercial flagging
and transcoding times.  I think I'd rather have a dual 1GHz box for the
mythbackend than the single-processor 1.7GHz, but both are pretty
marginal machines for the task at hand.

If you're building a real HTPC that is also doing playback and storage
then you'd certainly want something better I think.  I personally use
original XBoxes for playback, but that's only good for standard def
recordings, high def output requires something better.

cheers
  Jeff