Selecting the Hardware

I started off using old computers for this, normally ones of lesser power and capacity than my main desktop machine which I like to play games on anyway. Doing video work on a PC does take some processing power and memory, but as a dedicated machine, probably less than what you are currently using for many games or even what they would provide you at work as a current standard system would be enough.

My current Myth-Box PC is an AMD 64 processor (3000+) and 2 Gig of RAM. It’s fairly old by today’s standards but by no means lacking in performance. I would suggest that any dual-core Intels would be fine today for selection. Perhaps a bit more memory than 2 Gig could help but I don’t think it’s needed for this. Minimum requirements are here.

A video card is an important part of this, to output the displayed picture, controls and video to your screen(s) plays a big part in the success of the system. My recommendation would be to select an NVIDIA card, mine is a Geforce 6200 that also came without a fan. You are welcome to try others, Ubuntu supports many brands of cards and although even for NVIDIA the drivers are lacking in technical ability, this is the most widely used and supported type, and the most successful. My card has a nice heat sink and it still gets warm without the fan on it, but I prefer this as video card fans are often noisy and wear out. Keeping in mind that its going to be next to your TV, or at least in the same room and powered on a lot of the time, wear, tear, reliability and noise are all important factors.

You may also want to setup dual displays, a monitor on the side and an output connection to your TV. There are options for this, but I haven’t done it in MythTV myself. Most video cards have multi-output connections anyway so you can probably add this in if you need to later, for this I am sticking to the basics.

You need a hard drive of course and I have a decent 200G Western Digital, my personal choice of manufacturer. It was one of the first SATA drives I got so I found it fast and it’s still running fine today. Anything bigger is fine but for some storage of TV and Music, I would say today that 200G would be a starting point. I recently got a 750G drive and threw that in too, now I have more than I need.

A DVD (RW) drive is pretty much a standard these days, don’t forget to include one. A floppy drive is not required The CD will be used to boot and install your software and also it can be used later to rip cds, dvds and archive files and videos to the DVD.

Most motherboards have a network interface in them and will be required. In my case I have added a wifi card which is enough for it to download TV guide data and updates, but no good if it’s being used as a media centre.

The computer case is a big part of what this will be. It’s going to sit in the lounge room and perhaps be seen, this component is also the most noisy part so you need to choose wisely. I ended up with a Thermaltake Media Lab case which I am pretty happy with. They have a few other nicer models now and they are a bit more expensive over normal cases as they include a remote control and a LED display. These things can be configured to work with MythTV but the main focus here is the noise. I avoided the low-profile cases as they are noisy and restricted with the drive/card space options. In here the ‘silent’ fan runs at 19dba with the other fans running at 19dba. It all adds up and like the biggest issue with the xbox 360 is the noise, if you get a noisy case then it will interrupt your viewing pleasure. By all means if you want to spend a bit more on thermal/liquid cooling then it could be a good option.

The other special part I have included in my unit is a wireless keyboard and mouse. The computer is over with the other equipment against the wall at a nice viewing distance and the coffee table in front of me is the ideal place for the controls, especially when setting and configuring it up. Check the range of any you select and some nice small/light keyboards are around now too. Basically most will work with Linux/ubuntu so for this you can go for it.

As I mentioned before, the MediaLab case comes with a remote control, and many of the DTV cards also come with remote controls and various IR receivers. Most of them work or can be configured to manage standard stuff within the MythTV software like menu selection, play/stop/pause etc, but also having a keyboard handy is very useful.

And the final piece of the puzzle is the DTV card.

Many cards out there on the market are widely available but only a select few work under linux. They need to have driver support and actually be what your are expecting and needing to get. There is a good list of Video Capture Cards and another list of ones that specifically have been tested, some are better than others and some require more setting up to get working.

Of these, I am mostly talking about HDTV or Terrestrial Capture Cards and you can have multiples of these in your PC. I don’t have any specific recommendation about which to get as they vary from country and location on availability and price, but I do suggest that you do your research, look up the types of cards in the links/sites above and be sure that you are getting the right one. If you can get a return policy from a store that may have some change-over option then all the better but you may be dropping $30-$50 on a card that wont work.

I have used mainly an older Twinhan DTV-T card, the one with the BT-878 chipset but now they have upgraded their model and these are not supported by drivers. I have also had some of these just fail over time, so I am running short of old stock but they are cheap when you can get them and they work well.

To function, these cards have a TV aerial connection in them, so when they are in the PC you also need to be able to connect your standard roof-mounted TV areal to them. You may need a splitter so you can connect your areal to the PC and still to your TV, better yet, power/amplified splitters might be an option, particularly if you are going to have multiple cards in the pc, all will need an aerial line to get a signal. And the signal needs to be of good quality, rabbit ears probably wont be good enough.

Finally, your TV is a big part of what your using this for. I now have a nice plasma and it’s wonderful. Originally I had a standard tube display and it was good. It required the old, single line composite output on my video card, but now with the new display, I have the DTV-I card directly connected to the HDMI input on the TV. The PC’s audio out is also directly connected to my amplifier for wonderful surround sound, but you may just connect this through standard audio cables to your TV like you would you DVD or Gaming console.

Just remember that whatever your options, it’s best to start simple and build up. I now use the optic-fiber audio connection out of my sound card to my amp, sounds better and less messy with fewer cables, but it took me two days to make that change and get it right.

This is also true when your building it and getting started. Build you PC and try it with a standard computer display to be sure it works, TV’s can be a bit weird when connecting and switching to a new device. If you see nothing on your TV when you power on the PC then it will take some guesswork to check out where you went wrong, if you use a working monitor then at least you know (perhaps) where the cause of any problems may be.

Build everything one step at a time and keep it simple. Of
course to this point we haven’t installed any software or operating system, we are just focused on getting the computer built and beginning to boot up.

If it’s all gone well to this point you will be seeing a BIOS boot up menu displayed when you power it on, hitting DEL as the ram tests will usually get you into the settings for the BIOS.

In here you want to check the settings. Some are very cryptic about ram and processor speed and timings, I would steer clear of that and leave them at their defaults.

Check your hard drives are being found and identified, also make sure the boot sequence has the CD/DVD in there at number 1 (at least until later).

You can turn off or disable all of the serial, parallel and other non-required options (this can help performance I am told) but generally, defaults here will basically do it and should be ok.

Notes:

If you don’t know how to build PC’s then get a friend to help you. Take care with the parts, double check that everything is plugged in the right way and most importantly, put in and tighten every screw that you can. A buzzing loose part is very annoying.

Next: Installing the software