had to have the following features:
- BlueRay support.
I don't think Myth/Linux supports blueray easily. 'They' are fighting hard to make you use windows. You certainly won't be ripping them on a kosher DRM enabled system though so if that is an aim then linux may be a better bet.
The rest is a doddle.
...what would you buy? Now you've decided that, what would you buy if your budget was more modest, say £2K?
Now you are talking about economic choices
Frankly at £2k you aren't pushing the boat out - spend wisely. (You're in the same ballpark as me).
Eg: I bought a 2nd hand £2500 Denon amp from eBay for £400 when my old amp died. OTOH we still use the B&W 110i speakers we bought as students (another wise choice). I don't think many people would complain at the sound we get from it. (OK, the £400 Rel Stratus II sub doesn't hurt).
I also bought a £99 Dell server P4 something to act as my backend. It records sky and DVB-S (so I get BBC HD). You don't need a quad-core yadda yadda
You do need lots of disk - I run 5x1Tb in RAID5 but that's OTT.
Right now (Jan '09) the frontends currently need more power than the BE if you do HD. But moves are afoot (eg Jun '09) to use the new nVidia HD capabilities - in fact our very own Mr Lord is doing stuff in that area (sorry Mark - I've been ill and not replied!).
If that pans out (and it will!) then a HD 5.1 Myth FE will run on something dirt cheap the size of a hardback with no fans and no hard disks.
At that point you end up with front-ends in the kids rooms, the kitchen etc etc.
This year, my resolution is to get a bigger TV, and to get rid of the physical CDs and DVDs, as far as possible. I'll probably want to throw an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 into the mix as well. I'm leaning towards MythTV, but it was a PITA to set up the last time I tried, and Windows Media Center was much nicer to look at and use, but requires that the PVR cards be in the same PC.
We already have a Samsung 32" LCD TV, which will suffice for now -- although I'd like to upgrade to 37" or 40" later in the year. We have a crappy Sony compact Hifi. We have a Humax PVR and a Toshiba DVD player.
I'd also like to cut down on the number of cables emanating from the back of the TV, because they're ugly, and it's much easier to chase a smaller number of cables into the wall (plaster on solid brick, by the way).
As for wires: I have a cat5 going into the lounge.
Then I have 1 phono (5.1) to the amp. 1 HDMI to the projector.
The amp has speaker wire to the speakers. 3 mains cables.
You really don't get much less wiring than that
It's more of a mess now 'cos we bought a Wii to make up for being ill over xmas
And I've offered to show my Myth setup to people before so I have no problem extending you that offer to you too
(It wasn't you last time was it?)
I think the real decision is "do you want to be able to play with it?".
Yes : MythTV
No : MediaPC
Previous Topic
Index
