[mythtv-users] Small, low cost MythTV clients...

[Todd Ignasiak]

On 5/1/07, Jason Sullivan <jason0x21 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/07, stuart <stuart at xnet.com> wrote:
> A bit of reading on the Galaxy website shows that these devices already do UPnP.
>
> http://www.galaxymetalgear.com/Products/3500IPTV.html
>
> So with a UPnP enabled MythTV backend, they should "just work", just
> not as a mythTV frontend.  If you wanted to run the frontend on the
> box, someone would have get one to see how much horsepower was inside,
> as the specs on the webpage don't lend much of a clue.
>
> The other things it doesn't say, besides raw horsepower: how much
> onboard memory, and the video chipset.  Those determine if it's even
> possible to run the frontend on the machine.
> Other questions that come to mind are: Can it netboot?  Could I slip a
> hard-drive in it?  The answer to both might be "yes", but it's hard to
> tell how much hacking would be required.

The specs say it's based on Sigma Designs video decoder (e.g. 8621L,
as mentioned in the review linked earlier in this thread).  It's not a
standard GPU, it's an MPEG decoder.  So, if the box does have enough
RAM to run myth, and storage to hold the executable (or access over a
network), myth would require modification to output via that decoder.
The specs for that decoder may or may not be available.  But, it does
look like a very interesting option for a UPnP frontend.

I have seen mentions of several other UPnP clients being used with
MythTV, but no detailed information.  What would be useful is a Wiki
page detailing UPnP clients with details about how well they work with
MythTV and perform other common functions like DVD playback, JPEG
picture viewing, music playback, etc.   As people try devices like
this one, they can fill in the details about if it works with MythTV,
and how well it works.