[Tfug] For sale: Fully built MythTV HTPC machine

[John Gruenenfelder]

Greetings TFUG,

For your inter-holiday buying pleasure, I have a complete MythTV box available.

The machine is in a small Shuttle case (SK41G) and contains the following:

* Athlon 2000 processor
* 1 GB of RAM
* one 500GB ATA drive and one 160GB ATA drive
* DVD reader/writer
* Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 MPEG encoder card (PCI card)
* NVidia 6500 GPU (AGP card)

The motherboard has a wealth of outputs available: 4 USB, 3 firewire,
two 9-pin serial, VGA out, TV out, and, of course, Ethernet.  The
NVidia card has VGA, DVI, and TV outputs and gives better TV out than
the on-board video, plus it can do OpenGL for both effects and TV-out.
 The PVR-150 MPEG encoder card has RCA, S-Video, and coax inputs
available.

The 500GB hard drive has been in use for only four days, though it was
purchased about two years ago (only now removed from its anti-static
bag).  The 160GB drive reports a single SMART sector relocation event,
but is still working fine.  To make you feel more at ease, however, I
will also include a second 160GB drive (identical to the other) which
you can use as you see fit.

The machine was used as a MythBox for a year or two and performs that
function admirably.  Currently, I have just installed a fresh copy of
Mythbuntu 11.10 and it seems more than happy with that (CD included,
BTW).

There are some *very* minor caveats that do not affect usage:

* This is a standard-def setup.  It does it well, though.
* The hardware is *just* barely too slow to handle HDTV.  If you had a
spare Athlon lying around, it may be possible to up the CPU speed
slightly to get over this hump, however.
* You will need a user input device of some sort.  A IR or RF remote
control, a USB or wireless keyboard, or something.

LIRC and by extension Mythbuntu support a huge variety of remote
controls and IR receivers, transmitters, and transceivers so finding
something that works shouldn't be too hard.

If you are the knowledgeable and adventurous type, for $20 I will also
include two ATI/X10 RF remote controls with USB receiver units.  Note
that these do *not* work as-is with the kernel or LIRC, but finding
the necessary info on the Internet or help from the LIRC community
should get you there.

I am asking $300 for this bounty and figured I should offer it to TFUG
first.  After that I suppose I'll try Craigslist.

Lastly, though this is hardly the forum for it, if you are not keen on
MythTV or another Linux alternative (like XBMC), then I don't see any
reason why this hardware wouldn't work with Windows Media Center
Edition.


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
Try Weasel Reader for Palm OS  --  http://weaselreader.org
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood
of my enemies!"
        --Sam of Sam & Max