[Madlug] Media PC Recommendations

[lordmoji]

Tim,

I'm running mythtv on a box I made just to use as a media server.
Works great although I don't use mythtv to rip(I use mplayer), I believe
mythtv can do it.

Here was my hardware setup, I haven't had any trouble with the hardware
minus the case, I would recommend another case as the NSK1300 is a bit
cramped, anything atx that you can replace the power supply with.

From newegg.com
DVD_BURN ASUS|DRW-1814BLT LS BLK % - OEM (Qty=1, Price=$35.99)
HD 500G|WD 7K 16M SATA2 WD5000AAKS - OEM (Qty=1, Price=$139.99)
CPU AMD|A64 X2 3800+ AM2 2x512K R - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$82.99)
CASE ANTEC|NSK1300 BK/SIL RT - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$89.99)
MB ASUS M2NPV-VM GF6150 AM2 - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$88.99)
MEM 1G|KST DII800 KVR800D2N5/1G R - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$91.99)

(The power supply I would have got if I had the room in the case)
PSU SEASONIC|S12-330 330W RT - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$59.99)

The only other thing I included was a heatsink and some fans from
coolerguys.com, I was limited because of the room in the NSK1300 so I
had to get a shorter heatsink but with a larger case you could pick and
choose.
I use the case to rip and then encode movies to x264. A ripped vob
takes about 4-7GB. When I encode movies down I get them to 1-1.7GB a
piece with one vorbis audio track.
I run gentoo on that box just because its easier to for me to tweak a
gentoo system but I'm sure it would work with any linux distro.

-MJ

On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:37:01 -0500
"Tim Schaab" <tschaab at gmail.com> wrote:

> Here's my goal. I want to build a PC in the TV room that will be able
> to rip our DVDs to the hard drive and replay them when needed. It
> won't need to record live TV or anything like that, we have a DVR
> already for that.
> 
> So my questions are:
> 
> 1.) Hardware recommendations
>      -- Hard drive space is a must I know. But what would be good mins
> for CPU & Memory
> 
> 2.) Software recommendations
>     -- Is there a good media PC software for Linux? Would mythtv work
> for this? Ideally would like to be able to just put a DVD in, get it
> ripped, and have a nice library to keep them in order.
> 
> Ideas? Thoughts?
>