This page holds some settings and tips, which helped me to setup my MythTV Media Center PC. Please don’t see this information as a howto or a ‘how to setup the best mythtv media pc’. It’s just my situation and things / configuration settings I encountered.

Hardware

What kind of hardware am I using at the moment:

  • Case: Thermaltake VC7000SNS
  • LCD Screen: Thermaltake Media Lab (first very nicely inside the Thermaltake Case)
  • Power supply: Nexus Technology NX-3500 SE 350 Watt
  • Motherboard: Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe (has 2 network ports)
  • Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4450E 2.30 GHz
  • Memory: Kingston ValueRam Dual Channel 2048 MB, PC6400, 800 MHz, 5, Kit Of 2
  • Harddisk: Samsung SpinPoint F1 750 GB, 7200 Rpm, 32 MB, S-ATA II/300
  • Optical Drive: Asus DRW-2014S1T S-ATA
  • Videocard: MSI NX7300 TD256EH (nVidia GeForce 7300LE)
  • TV-card: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500 (dual tuner)
  • Remote Control: Logitech Pro 2400 Cordless Desktop (Yeah I know, a fullsize keyboard??, But at least it has enough buttons 🙂

First thing I did was replace the 2 default fans of the case with 2 more silent fans.

Linux Distribution

I use Fedora as the linux distribution on my media pc. I am using redhat-ish distro’s already a long time. Normally I use CentOS for servers, but for desktops, notebooks and in this case a media pc, I prefer to use fedora.

Current version Fedora

When I first started with mythtv I believe I was using fedora core 3. In the mean time (and 2 media pc’s later) I have used almost all fedora releases in between, with currently fedora 12.

MythTV

Since a few weeks, I’ve finally upgraded to Mythtv 0.22

More detailed information: