3 replies to this topic

[Hydralisk]

Hi,

I'm looking at setting up Mythbuntu on a ASRock machine. I'm tossing up between the ASRock ION3D 152D and HTCore 152D. I guess I'll be setting up the box as a combined Front/Backend. What I want to do is:
- Connect the ASRock machine to the TV (with a tuner connected to it to record TV)
- Connect wirelessly to my shared media directory on my Windows machine to stream movies (non HD I understand).
- Operate as a normal PC for web browsing, youttube, etc

The ION3D is markedly cheaper and a few threads on this board all mention this one rather than the CoreHT series.

What are peoples thoughts on the choice between the 2?

Cheers,

Hydra

[rileyp]

If you only wanted to run a frontend the ASRock ION3D 152D would be perfect but if you want to run a backend on it and you want the menus to browse fast you will want an I3 or I5 . Its power should also prevent playback glitches when watching a show and mysql is doing its thing.
I would be wary of buying a small box though if its going to be a combo machine as you might want more hard drive space once you system is up and running and start enjoying its power. I'm on 6 tb and delete more stuff than I watch these days. I would try and get something that will contain at least 2 x (3.5 inch ) full size drives.
The reduced price of the larger drives will also be in your favour.
Are you in Australia?

Running a separate backend is the way to roll though and allows for
1 Cheap and multiple front ends with small power consumption and small size and small capacity disk or even no disk at all making it nice and quiet as well.
2 The back end can be any old pc you have laying round just pop some drives and tuners in it and away you go. An i3 is ideal but anything > or equal single core p4 would be fine
The only thing you wont like is you need a wired network for it to function effectively.

Edited by rileyp, 11 June 2012 - 09:25 AM.

[Hydralisk]

If you only wanted to run a frontend the ASRock ION3D 152D would be perfect but if you want to run a backend on it and you want the menus to browse fast you will want an I3 or I5 . Its power should also prevent playback glitches when watching a show and mysql is doing its thing.
I would be wary of buying a small box though if its going to be a combo machine as you might want more hard drive space once you system is up and running and start enjoying its power. I'm on 6 tb and delete more stuff than I watch these days. I would try and get something that will contain at least 2 x (3.5 inch ) full size drives.
The reduced price of the larger drives will also be in your favour.
Are you in Australia?

Running a separate backend is the way to roll though and allows for
1 Cheap and multiple front ends with small power consumption and small size and small capacity disk or even no disk at all making it nice and quiet as well.
2 The back end can be any old pc you have laying round just pop some drives and tuners in it and away you go. An i3 is ideal but anything > or equal single core p4 would be fine
The only thing you wont like is you need a wired network for it to function effectively.

Thanks for your response RileyP.

I'm not entirely clear on the difference between the front and back end (even after reading through some posts). Is there different software running on them or is it just that all the media is stored on the back end and streamed to the front end when required?

I was sort of seeing my xp machine media drives effectively being the back end, with the Mythbuntu ION3D 152D as the front end. Only thing that would be stored on it is recorded TV and the odd HD movie which I would copy over the network to the ION3D 152D. Lower res video I was hoping to stream over the wireless network. I would also like to use it for web browsing.

Yes, I am in Australia.

Does this setup seem reasonable for what I want to do?

Cheers,

Hydra

[rileyp]

All the information that mythtv stores (besides the actual recordings and metadata) is kept on a mysql database. This database runs on the master backend. Its normal to put tuners in your master backend so recordings can be made with information from the database and this info can be used to put that pc to sleep and wake it up again to record etc and even control others to do the same. Its also normal to store all music and video files here as well and any other data you wish to share across your home network and run programs like sickbeard etc to get media for you . My mythtv backend is my media server. It is possible to have slave backends as well but they are used in situations where you want to record 50 channels at once and your backend hasn't the ability to cope with the cpu or i/o demands! They still depend on the database on the master though and will do nothing unless the master tells them to.
Because all the master backend does is record tv and share media and run the db it has no requirement for a frontend( which is what you use to watch mythtv) if you do not wish to have one on it. For example if its under the stairs you will never sit under the stairs and watch tv. Unless your are 12. No harm in installing it though as it uses no resources unless its running and you might want to see if a tuner works as soon as you plug it in and config it. I have my backend in my shed on the bench. I can watch tv in the shed when I'm there if i want as I have a frontend installed on it as well.
You might want to have a pc running a frontend and the master backend on the same machine in your living room and thats fine too if thats what you want to do but it has implications that some do not like and they are.
1 hard disk noise.
2 size to allow for hard drives.
3 The better half noticing a computer running at 2 am in the morning and asking about electricity consumption. (Out of site out of site mind) I use a n36l hp microserver for my backend. Its a dual core 1.3 ghz box that has 4 hard drives in it. Power is around 60 watts . I just let it run. I could use acpi wake up so it shuts down when its not busy but I haven't bothered. Its not the most powerfull machine and the recordings menu probably does not load as fast as on I3 or I5 backended systems but it meets my needs perfectly. Unfortunately it all comes down to a compromise between power consumption and cpu power for me.

You cannot run a mythtv backend on a windows install. You can run wine on linux box though to run windows applications...

Edited by rileyp, 14 June 2012 - 08:21 AM.