MythTV

[secret-steve-crumbles]

So, I'm going to be building a MythTV box soon.

Has anyone out there built one before that could offer any advice? The cheapest system I could piece together on newegg to build myself comes to $462.

Has anyone done it cheaper? If so, I'm open to suggestions. Thanks in advance.

[samureye]

My friends Kevin and Dan did it (http://revision3.com/systm/mythtv/).

[computoman]

The better the video input card (the more the card itself processes all the codecs and converts them without your cpu's help) you have, the less power is needed in the computer. Rumor has it with the right card, you could run mythtv one input backend on a p2-400 (p3- 1ghz or better is recommended). Be sure the card is supported before you purchase one though. I went to a demo of mythtv this last weekend, but the video is not up for viewing yet. One nice thing I liked about it was that you could use thin clients as front ends via a specialized version of ltsp being used in mythtv. We use thin clients in the student lab. Might be neat to stream say something like systm, tekzilla, or other educational video to the labs. With thin clients and monitors (instead of tv's) it could be used at home and parents could really manage and monitor what the kids were able to watch and when.