[mythtv-users] what's the current favorite mini-{i, a}tx for hdtv out (vga or DVI)

[Eric Gilbert]

On 2/2/07, MythTV <mythtv at taoyama.com> wrote:
> I would also recommend a MacMini running OSX. It is quiet, goes to
> sleep when there is no activity but can be woken up using the remote.
> The 1.66GHz Core Duo can definitely handle HDTV output.  The only
> caveats are:
>
> It cannot keep up if I use my Apple 23" LCD or set the output to
> 1920x1080 connected to my TV.  It works great when the output is set
> to 720p.  I think this might be a memory bandwidth problem with the
> shared memory for video.  (1920x1080 is a lot of pixels) Using a
> 1.83GHz Core Duo didn't seem to help.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Are you saying that you can scale and deinterlace 1080i content to
your TV at 720p with a 1.66GHz Core Duo mac mini just fine? And are
you just saying that 1080i content cannot be passed unfiltered to the
Cinema Display or your TV? Are you also saying that optical spdif
output and ac3 passthrough are working just fine as well? Sorry to
sound "simple" but  the wiki is not clear on this, and if true my WAF
would go up exponentially if this is the case. Right now on the
Commell LV667T board I still have to use xine for 1080i content.

Can you update the wiki with full details of your current status and
working configuration?  It would seem that this info is pretty
significant and would help a large number of folks looking for the
holy grail of a small stable quiet hdtv frontend. Even with a
restriction of 720p output, many TV's will upscale 720p to 1080i
natively, and we could come up with a better matrix of supported
hardware.

Thanks!