Ok,
I'm off to MediaMarkt later on to get my bits and pieces to start the first part of my MCE system
I just need to confirm some things though.
1) I'm going for a dedicated core. As long as linux will run on it, I'm ok right? The motherboard concerns are only for MDs and hybrids? 2Gb RAM is more than enough, correct?
3) I don't want to draw a distinction between ripped content, stuff downloaded from a torrent and stuff recorded off-air. I'm thinking of a BIG HDD for media and then a smaller one for OS / swap etc. Where in the Linux directory stucture should I mount my media drive? I'm assuming /home, but is this where VDR puts it's stuff too? (I know about the auto-mount, but, like I said, I want my TV recordings to make use of the same available space as my other sourced media. Alternatively, should I just go for one big drive (or array) rather than splitting off the OS?)
I'll answer the ones I know.
1 - I have a "recycled" PC for my Core. Pretty much anything goes. More CPU/Bandwidth/Disk IO required for more live recording than for playback (since most of that is at MD) so pretty much a decent system.
3 - Whatever hard disk you plug in will be used for media. The system doesn't really care if you have MP3s ripped DVDs or recorded TV shows on the drive. It will use it. That is all in there. I have my collection spread across 4 different drives and I can't tell what physical hardware they reside on until I try and sort by filename. You can just leave the drive blank and plug it in. After LinuxMCE is running it will notice the drive and add it to your collection of storage units. No need to mount it directly.