Power Supply Wattage Calculator – JS Custom PCs, LLC – Custom Built PCs, Laptops and Servers! You Need It We Can Build It! I found this helpful little calculator. I am trying to build a quiet PC and keeping the Power Supply Unit to a minimum will help. I don’t need to put a 500 W PSU if I am not going to ever draw over 350 watts.

silverstonetek.products-tj06

Maybe this is a better link to the case.

Newegg.com – Silverstone SST-TJ06-S Cases (Computer Cases, ATX Form)

Looks like I found a case.

ASUS A8N-SLI DELUXE Motherboard Specifications and Technical Information

Maybe this for a mother board?

What is PCI Express? A Layman’s Guide to High Speed PCI-E Technology

Looks like I should go for a PCI Express video card, I’m leaning to the Nvidia 6600

As I begin to investigate the components of my Mythical TV I suspect that I will go for an nVidia graphics card, a pcHDTV card for OTA HDTV, a Seasonic or Enermax Power Supply, a couple of Samsung 160GB Hard drives, and either a Hauppauge PVR350 or a Twinhan TH1022 . And that’s just for starters.

I need to see how I will feed the 4DTV into the MythTV box. Since 4DTV is Motorola proprietary, and they don’t have a PC card, I will probably need to add a video capture card and feed the component video into the box. Still to be investigated. And I need to see if there is an MPEG2 4:2:2 receiver card I can can get, instead of the PVR350 or the Twinhan (I think they are both 4:2:0 receivers.) I think the 4:2:2 decoders run into $K. But I will keep on looking.

So, it looks like I will need at least 6 5v PCI slots to support the cards I am looking at. And I still haven’t looked at the sound card yet. I was planning on feeding the audio into my home stereo, but I still need to support 5.1 audio.

And at least a 2.4 GHz CPU, preferably 3+ GHz. And that’s going to generate a lot of heat, so I need to see how it will be cooled. A lot of factors to consider.

MythTV
All right, I’m going to go for it. I will build my own Linux-based PVR that can support my two satellite receivers (4DTV and MPEG/DVB) and OTA HDTV. Now it is just a matter of getting the right gear to make it happen.

The new IP version 6 address space (128 bits) only allows you to address 340 Tera-Yotta-items (3.4×10³⁸.) I hope they aren’t limiting themselves right from the start. (The current 32 bit IPv4 addresses only allowed you to address 4 billion items. )

I am reading that there are plans to start the the addressing off by using the 48 bit Media Access Control (MAC) address found in most Network Interface Cards. That only allows you to address 281 Tera-items. And once you give a MAC address to every toaster, refrigerator, and light switch out there, those are going to be in short supply as well…

Ahh, I see they are upgrading the MAC addresses to 64 bits. That means they can uniquely address 18 Exa-toasters. That should last for my lifetime. (Famous last words)