Knoppmyth
KnoppMyth is a specialized distribution of Knoppix for MythTV. It can be used to install a full Knoppix/MythTV system, a front-end, or upgrade an existing KnoppMyth installation.
Advantages
Ease of Installation
One of the major complaints about MythTV has always been that it is difficult to install and configure. KnoppMyth, however, is a general purpose solution to this in that it contains a completely configured MythTV installation system, as well as a full Linux system. If the hardware is commonly used, or well documented hardware, virtually no manual configuration may be necessary. Generally, a user selecting Auto Configure only needs to specify network settings, confirm one or two settings, and wait for the week's television listings to be downloaded.
Run From CD Possibility
When used for front-end function only, KnoppMyth can run off of the CD alone. This, however, requires there to be an already functioning MythTV back-end.
Recommended Minimum Specifications
There is a wide range of speculation on the minimal system hardware required to operate MythTV. Performance can differ depending on what kind of video capture device you use (a "dumb" frame grabber vs. a hardware encoder), your CPU speed and type, amount of RAM, whether the system is a front and back end. Some users will even be as specific to note specific types of CPUs, chipsets, audio cards, However there is some general consensus on some requirements.
The absolute minimum system, assuming one is using a "dumb" video card, is about a Pentium III 500 MHz, and about 256 MB of RAM. This, however, is barely enough to make MythTV function. This system can encode video in real-time, but, unless the system has a hardware accelerated MPEG-2 encoder, and a hardware accelerated MPEG-2 decoding video card, should be incapable of playing video at the same time. This can be dealt with by either not watching video while recording, or by serving the data to another front-end machine.
To allow for "live" video watching, approximately 512 MB of RAM and at least a Pentium III 800 MHz system is required. As usual, though, more the more powerful the system is, the better. However, some recommend that a 1.4 GHz CPU should be used for "live" TV viewing.
See also: MythTV