[NTLUG:Discuss] mythTV and ubuntu 10.04

[Ralph Green]

On Mon, 2010-06-28 at 16:51 -0500, Stuart Johnston wrote:
> > Will this old dell work with the proper TV tuner card?
> 
> If you are planning on watching recorded HDTV, your P4 may have trouble 
> keeping up.  If you have a video card that supports XvMC, that would be 
> better.

  There are lots of tuner choices.  Since I don't watch TV, others
should respond about that.  I do play videos, though.  There are lots of
good conference recordings available on the web.  blip.tv/pycon and free
electrons are favorites.  Your computer uses an Intel 845 chipset and
has a Pentium 4 that could be anything from single core 1.8GHz to
Hyperthreaded 3 GHz.  On the low end, some videos will give you a
problem.  On the high end, you should be fine.  A newer computer would
be better, but might be wasteful.  A simple CPU upgrade(maybe a better
heatsink, too) might be all you need to buy.  Even fast P4 chips are
cheap on the second hand market these days.  So, I say don't spend much
money until you know you'll use the system a bunch.  Then, it might be
worth investing in a newer, faster, lower power and quieter computer.
The low power AMD systems are particularly good, I think, but don't get
that now.  I find a 2.8 GHz P4 can play any video I give it, if it has
decent video.  I think your computer uses Intel chipset video and it is
not great, but really it is good enough for 2d video playback.  The 1.8
GHz machines are fine for most stuff, and if you don't have much HD
material, then even that may suit you.
 And, be sure you have a decent amount of RAM.  You can't have too much.
I would not mess with less than a gig in a media system.  Dell says 1
gig is the max for that system, but I think it can really go to 2 gigs.
The bigger dimms just were not around when they speced the system.  If
you are just testing, you can get by with less, but you will be swapping
and that is not a good thing for a media player.
Good luck,
Ralph