1) Read up on RAID and Linux, the built in RAID will give as good performance in this app as any other choice, and be easier to deal with if there is a crash.
2) HD Capture- if you mean HD OTA or un-encrypted cable get the HDHomeRun. There are no solutions for HD component or HDMI at present.
3) USBUIRT for IR blaster/receiver/learner
4) Use the latest version LMCE d/l or disk.
What you have will do most of what you want I think with the provisos above. However the Divx codecs and the MP3 codecs may need to be manually installed, I'm not sure they are included.
Thanx alot for helping 1audio. Your answers brought up some new questions but I kind of thought that might happen of course. I'm so mystified by some of this because so much of it is so new to me and partly because my questions probably weren't as clear as maybe they should have been. Your answers helped though. In part to clarify what questions I should ask.
I had kind of guessed from what I read on the pages of this project USBUIRT might be the best solution, I just wondered really if if was the easiest for a newb to Linux to configure. I'll order that today.
The raid, I'm not quite as concerned with but I chose that board because I read on here that the Asus M2NPV-VM was the board the developers used in testing the software had onboard true hardware raid. So I thought that was the "built in raid", but begs the questions if I got your point right.
Would Linux software raid as opposed to hardware raid be an easier solution? Also which would give the best performance advantage? Or does a raid 0 configuration give enough of a performance advantage in this application to be worth the effort in any case? I was was thinking it would if I was encoding incoming HD programing to it, otherwise I would just slap in a SATA300 750gig and skip the raid altogether. I have had some experience with hardware raid in both XP and my Ubuntu media server uses hardware raid for redundancy. It was a little confusing but I figured it out well enough to get it working. Wasn't sure though if it would be as easy to do with Kubuntu.
From what I've been able to glean from reading here it's easier to do it with a separate text install of Kubuntu and then use the cd install of LinuxMCE. Can anyone tell me for sure if that's correct? I have not had much luck with the dvd install so far. I just hoped that someone who has used this motherboard for a working installation could tell me what worked for them. I am reading up on Linux and raid, that's for sure, I was nearly an expert on XP and now I'm back to newb.
I thought that HDHomerun might be the simplest answer, though wasn't sure.
Does anyone know does the software recognize and autoconfigure that, doesn't seem like it would need to? I don't really need OTA where I live that wouldn't be of much use to me. My only source of incoming HD programming is what comes out of the cable box. I'm assuming that the output from HDHomerun would be dealt with by LMCE similarly to the way it would deal with video from my media server.
How hard is it to configure LMCE to use either of those sources? In the confirmed hardware list for capture cards none of those listed as far as I could tell could capture true HD. I was surprised because most were Haupage cards and they make several now that can.
I think that I should be able to manage with the Codec install. On my Ubuntu server I just used a script called EasyUbuntu, I believe it's called, and it gave me about everthing I needed. I can use streamed Divx encoded films and Mp3's on there with no problems. Thanks a ton 1audio for your kind response, I hope eventually to understand this well enough to be of help to others here too, I love this project and hope it blows Vista off the playing field.
