Re: Suggestions for new Media PC

[Ian Oliver <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In article <4B790C3C.9060406@xxxxxxx>, Jamie Bennett wrote:
> WOW, five of them. I have one and was contemplating another, but five
:)

IKWYM!  I initially got an R3600 and used a cobbled together backend. It
worked so well that I decided to make a proper backend, and an R3610
seemed a good choice. I also got a second R3600 for the kitchen.  This
then worked so well that we decided to get a third R3600 for the bedroom,
and I got another that will attached to a fourth TV but also be a spare.

> Does your R3610 run MythTV backend and if so, do you have TV-Tuners
> attached?

I have four Hauppauge Nova T DVB-T tuners attached to it via a hub. I used
male-to-male coax couplers to let the tuners plug straight into my TV
splitter.

> I'm wondering how it would cope with a couple of USB freeview
> tunes recording at the same time as playback. I presume it would cope
> fine but it would be nice to know before I press the buy button.

I haven't explored the limits yet, but I have seen eight recordings going
at once and we were also doing playback. The CPU load on the backend is
low and the USB isn't saturated. I have added an eSATA 1TB disk to the
backend as the built-in 320GB one was too small and I also worried about
disk throughput.

The system is still being built, and there is still lots of tweaking and
programming of remotes to do, but wife/daughter are already giving it 8
marks out of 10!  Daughter actually gave it 9 as she likes being able to
control it all via a web browser and to be able to easily download the MP2
files to her PC and convert them to iPod video format.

Ian Oliver
Sunny Leeds, UK
Using Java on Tini for control via Dallas 1-wire




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