I think i already told everyone who cares, but just in case I didn’t… I recently performed a major upgrade on the Linux box that I use as a Tivo like thing (DVR, PVR, what ever other name you like) running the open source myth tv software, hence the name. For Christmas I got a new capture card that does HDTV, and when I went to install it earlier this month, I quickly discovered that my machine was not powerful enough to play back the 1080i HD content that it was recording. This lead to a scramble to find some hardware upgrade options. There were a lot of constraints that made the search rather difficult that I won’t go into. The end result is that I now have a very super silent beast of a machine running my TV. I must say that after 3 years of using 3 different, but all under powered machines for this purpose, having a beast is nice! The on screen TV guide actually works now, much to the pleasure of my room mates, who actually use that feature. Without further ado I suppose, here is all the hardware in the current system.
Oh and theres a 160Gb hard drive and a DVD drive in the thing, but they are legacy. So whats cool about all this, well its quieter by a lot. The iLab guys were always complaining about the noise the old one would make. It wasn’t even that bad, but now their stuff is louder, so I can complain, if I were to care, but I don’t really. Also, its efficient, the power supply is above average at ~80% efficient, and I’m pretty sure the 65 watt CPU is actually using less power than the older, much slower Athlon XP CPU I had in there before. Also, I can now watch HD shows, complete with automatic commercial removal and all the other Tvio like niceties, just in time for Lost season 34! Mmmm should you expect a lost post, soon, hum, you’ll just have to wait and see I suppose.