[mythtv-users] Future Myth user with questions -- ME6000 or not?

jose rubio debian at nc.rr.com
Wed Oct 22 09:45:09 EDT 2003


On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 03:30, Torsten Schenkel wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 02:50, Clay wrote:
> 
> Hallo brother in mind :-)
> 
> > the living room.  I'm interested in building a VIA EPIA ME6000-based 
> > machine for this purpose that would serve as its own frontend/backend 
> > -- in other words, a standalone Myth machine.  (I considered a Pundit, 
> > but maybe that'll be in the future -- I want as little noise as 
> > possible, and the fact that the Pundit even has a CPU fan turns me 
> > off.)  
> 
> I also went for the Epia ME6000 for beng fanless. I do have a Zalman PSU
> that has a fan though. So 1 Fan in the whole system, if you go for a
> dedicated Micro-ITX case with fanless PSU, you should get a really quiet
> system (I heard of power related problems with a 150W PSU when loading
> the system, so be careful)
> 
> > I saw a recent post showing some success with an ME6000 Myth 
> > machine, so obviously the lagging CPU is no longer much of an issue.
> 
> That might have been mine, most is in there, so look at the archives. 
> 
> > However, I'm curious: should I purchase a WinTV PVR 350 rather than a 
> > 250 for the ME6000?  I've heard mixed reviews on the TV-out quality of 
> > the EPIA series, and I want the highest quality I can get.  My goal is 
> > for this near-silent Myth machine to be as close to the original TV 
> > quality, if not the same quality, as possible (coming from analog 
> > cable).  It seems the consensus on the PVR 350 is that it has possibly 
> > the best TV-out quality for the purposes of viewing video (ie, cable 
> > content from the hardware MPEG2 encoder) on a standard TV from a Myth 
> > box; is this true or am I misinformed?
> 
> I'm content with the TV-out quality on the Epia, but I don't have a high
> end TV set. TV quality is only slightly lower than direct, but this
> depends on channel and cable. 
> 
> But in your case I would go for the 350, it doesn't cost that much more
> and you have the second option. I couldn't lay hands on one, so I went
> for the 250. 
> 
> > Sorry for the long post.  I've been psyched for months to get this 
> > project started, and it seems hardware support has matured to the point 
> > where I can begin.  Am I completely off-base in thinking that an ME6000 
> > machine with about 512 megs of RAM will be better off for TV viewing 
> > with a PVR 350, or would it be smarter to just get a PVR 250 and rely 
> > on the ME6000's TV out?  Or am I headed in the complete wrong direction 
> > with this machine?
> 
> ME6000 with 512MB is what I run here, a 5krpm 160GB HDD, CLE266 HW
> decoding and the system is playing LiveTV smoothly at 5000bps. Higher
> bitrates cause prebuffering pauses or stutters, so the DMA is on the
> edge.
> 
> CPU:
> 
> Live-TV: ~30%, stutters when OSD is on
> DivX 640x480 2200bps: ~60%
> DVD: ~90%
> 
> But CLE266 support for Xine is just around the corner :-), don't know
> about PVR350.
> 
> So if you are in for a silent system and are willing to take some slight
> disadvantages, go for the Epia. It takes a bit more work to get it going
> also :-)
> 
> Beware: An Epia ME6000 will cost you nearly as much as an Athlon 2000,
> board + graphics card.
> 
> Feel free to ask questions, at the moment experience is all I can give
> back to the linux community,
> 
> Torsten
> 

I agree with Torsten.  Specially in that you should get the 350.  if you
don't like it's tv-out then don't use it but for a few more bucks you'll
have the option.  This will also take heat off your cpu because you
won't be using it much.
Be warned though that the tv-out on the 350 is highly experimental IMO.


-jose-



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