More HTPC thoughts

Now that the shopping list for this stage of the project is complete, ive been reading whatever I can about MythTV and general tips and tricks. I cant wait to buy the next lot of parts tomorrow, and really wish the hardware was all assembled and working so that I could get on with tinkering with the software that will be installed eventually.

In my research Ive discovered that the DVICO dual DVB-T tuner card that I want outputs one tuner via the PCI slot, and the other via an internal USB connector. I wrote last time about the USB connectors on the motherboard, and my need for more than the usual two (dual) internal connectors. Luckily after the 4 front panel USB connectors and the VFD are connected to the motherboard, I will still have one more internal USB port left. I will use that for the dual tuner card's USB output. I guess in a pinch I could add a mini USB hub to the inside of the case somewhere, to add some extra internal ports.

It also occurred to me that the Haupage PVR-350 is probably an analog TV card. I couldnt find any info which specifically said that it is or isnt, but I assume that if it was digital (DVB-T), the specs would say so. Thats a problem because the analog TV reception around here is rubbish, and digital TV is much clearer to begin with.

I still want a hardware MPEG encoder (one of the PVR-350 features that I was looking forward to) but I may have to do without it, or try and find a decent digital tuner card which includes a working encoder. With the dual core AMD64 X2 CPU, I probably wont miss it too much, but it would be nice to have. The motherboard only has two standard PCI slots, and they are reserved for the tuner cards - I have been quite surprised that I have not yet found a digital tuner card on a PCI-Express board - they all still seem to be on standard PCI cards, but that should change as PCI-Express makes a wider impact.