Mythical TV … can Open Source tinkering be any cooler?
Mythbuntu
My DVD player, which is a Sony and only about 5 years old, is on the fritz. My Tivo, likewise 5 years old, is showing heavy pixilation which I’m going to assume is related to it’s hard drive being 5 years old and having run 24×365 and starting to go (over 43,000 hours). My (current) TV is standard definition, but I plan on upgrading to HDTV this Christmas (or sooner if my plans pan out). I wasn’t looking forward to the price of a set-top Blu-Ray player nor an HD Tivo, both of which would be limited to playing content only on the TV they were attached to, so I decided to go it alone and build a media center computer.
I poked around a lot and have setteled on an Ubuntu implmentation of MythTV called Mythbuntu. I seriously considered adding some stuff (a video capture card, larger hard drive, HDMI output, etc) to an older PC which I had just decomissioned and was planning on donating (wiped the hard drive and installed Ubuntu Hardy). However, after doing some research I decided to build a decently powered frontend/backend combination which will later be the hub of my content. I’m going to be assembling the system this weekend and plan on tinkering a few days with it before moving it into the living room. I did my research and setteled on the following hardware:
- Micro ATX Case (Ultra Micro Fly) … may be a bit large, but I wanted plenty of room. I’m also concerned with the noise as I’ve returned a Ultra power supply in the past as I couldn’t think over the noise.
- EVGA e-7150 which has onboard HDMI, DVI, VGA as well as Optical and Coax S/PDIF
- Intel Q6600 (Quad @ 2.4GHz) as I want something with some horsepower which will not require a massive fan to keep it cool
- ZeroTHERM CPU Cooler
- 2GB 800MHz RAM
- 1TB Hard Drive
- Lite-On Blu-Ray Burner
- PCHDTV-5500 as one HD OR only SD capture card
- HDHomerun for 2 other HD captures
I plan on spending some time this weekend assembling and will blog my experience with setup of Mythbuntu, hardware and driver setup and the like.
Check back for more info soon….