Hardware Recommendations

[MDH1966]

Again, if you want my advice..you'll do good to base your hybrid on a server motherboard. Your chance of both hardware compatibility and reliability go up immensely. Keep in mind, this machine needs to run 24-7.

-Thom

That's right, you said that already (I didn't ignore you, I just forgot) .  I don't know anything about server MB vs plain ole everyday MB.  I will do some research on this and not clutter your forum with that..yet.  :-)

Any advice on the Silicondust vs Hauppauge vs pdHDTV question for tuner cards.  Like I said, this is a new build so my concern is performace as well as compatability.  It seems that all of there are plug-n-play in your system so the question is more about performance.

M.

[purps]

Server motherboards do seem awfully expensive, but of course you get what you pay for. I for one (and I'm sure plenty of others) have been getting on OK with "normal" motherboards (although my core motherboard did fry the other week.... ahem). Personally I would definitely consider getting a server motherboard in the future, if only because Thom has recommended it... the difference is that I have been playing with LMCE for several years, and have fully accepted it into my life! Maybe you do not want to spend that much of your hard-earned to begin with.

Now you've narrowed it down a bit (we're going with full ATX right?), maybe have another look at the wiki, keep newegg open on another tab, and see what's available. I would say that ASUS or Gigabit were reasonable brands. Post back with some motherboards that you like the look of. One thing I had to keep in mind when buying a full ATX mobo was the number of PCI slots vs PCIe slots. I needed at least 3 PCI slots (two tuners and once NIC). You might want to consider this also, as it keeps more options open to you in the future.

Cheers,
Matt.

[MDH1966]

I've looked at newegg and saw that the server MB all seem to have built in video.  This was an issue when I was building my MythTV.  It was a micro ATX and had a built in Intel GPU.  The options in the bios were limited to putting it as a second priority to the nVidia card (9 series I think).  I couldn't disable the onboard GPU completely.  This worked fine with Myth but seemed to be problematic with LMCE.  I couldn't use the onboard GPU with either because of perfomance issues.  I really needed the more robust nVidia performance.  Could this be an issue with the server MB as well or do I just need to pay attention to the onboard GPU specs.  I didn't see one with onboard nVidia.

M.

[purps]

That surprises me; I thought you could disable onboard graphics completely and just tell it to "look" at the PCIe slot or whatever and that was that. Are you sure it was properly disabled?

Sorry, you said you had an issue building your MythTV, but then you said it worked fine with Myth and caused problems with LMCE - could you clarify please?

[MDH1966]

That surprises me; I thought you could disable onboard graphics completely and just tell it to "look" at the PCIe slot or whatever and that was that. Are you sure it was properly disabled?

Sorry, you said you had an issue building your MythTV, but then you said it worked fine with Myth and caused problems with LMCE - could you clarify please?

Sorry about the confusion.  I had memory problems with setting up my MythTV.  It was a Hauppauge issue when you installed the latest nVidia drivers and also tried to get component out.  I had to edit the grub to reaollocate memory on boot up so the the nVidia drivers had room to load.  Once I fixed that in Myth, it was fine.  That was the only real issue but it was well documented.

The LMCE issue was because the onboard Intel GPU wasn't cutting it, when I looked in the BIOS to try to bypass it, it only allowed me to put the onboard as a secondary priority and not disable it completely.  This particular problem didn't seem to cause an issue with MythTV but LMCE didn't like it.  I even connected a monitor to both outputs just to see what it was doing.  If the onboard GPU was set to the primary, it would install and load just fine.  I just had perfomance issues with HD and the nVidia card had no output at all.  If I set the nVidia card as the primary, then I would get to the video wizard and and it would just hang.  I couldn't seem to get it to show on the screen.  I know that there are instructions for hitting the right keys in the right order to get a screen to show up but they didn't seem to work.  I could dig through my docs and find the MB model and also tell you what it says about the video options for the BIOS.

M.

[purps]

I really don't know what to say, I never knew that could happen.

If you want to be absolutely sure that you are not going to be affected by this issue, get either a motherboard with no onboard graphics, or one with onboard graphics that you can use (i.e. nVidia). Are you dead set on a server motherboard?

[MDH1966]

No, I am not dead set on a server MB.  Thom mentioned it so I thought it was worth looking into.  I completely respect Thom's opinion but when I noticed that I wasn't finding a server MB that didn't have an onboard GPU, I started backing away from them.  This was based on my experience with my MSI G62-75221X4-Q13.  That is the MB in my MythTV.  In the advanced BIOS features of the utility, it has "Primary Graphic's Adapter".  It doesn't even list in the book what the options are or what they do.  It's not a great resource.  I think that I will go with a full ATX Asus or gigabit w/o onboard graphics.  Does LMCE support nVidia VDPAU?  I know that Linux and MythTV do.

I'm still looking for advice on the SiliconDust vs Hauppauge vs pcHDTV capture devices.  Any thoughts?

[marrandy]

I would honestly recommend an HDHomeRun, if you want a ClearQAM tuner...otherwise, get a Hauppauge HD-PVR and attach to your cable box's component out.

The Gyro remotes have their own transceiver and do not use the USB UIRT. However, the UIRT will prove instrumental in IR control of your A/V gear.

-Thom

If you don't have a cable box with component, only HDMI, I have HEARD that HD Fury2 or better still, 3 will remove the HDCP giving you a clean signal for storage on the HD-PVR b=via component.

Anyone have any other info on that product, or know anyone that has tried it, speak up.