[mythtv-users] Cheap and quiet hardware for SD MythTV - possible?

[Jarod Wilson]

On Jul 31, 2009, at 4:44 PM, Jim Stichnoth wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 1:10 PM, Robert McNamara <robert.mcnamara at gmail.com 
> > wrote:
> The ION Boards are being hotly anticipated as frontends, but I would
> never want to run a combined frontend/backend on them-- It will do
> everything you need a backend to do... eventually.  I have become so
> accustomed to things like realtime commercial flagging, huge DB
> lookups, etc. that I wouldn't want to delve into ION land for a
> combined system.  You can probably find a nice ION frontend for a few
> hundred pounds, but you are still going to need to find a reliable
> backend, some tuner cards, and disk space for your recordings.  In
> short, I think <200 Pounds for a *full* myth system will be
> sacrificing too much performance to make it worthwhile.
>
> I wouldn't underestimate the power of the Atom processor.  Although  
> I haven't done any formal performance comparisons, I found that the  
> Atom performs comparably to the 2.8GHz P4 system that I occasionally  
> do test installs on.  Plenty of people use systems like the P4 for  
> their backend and are quite happy.  I even have my two Zotac IONITX  
> "C" machines running mythjobqueue for commflagging.  They can  
> commflag a 720p or 1080i ATSC recording at about 80% realtime speed  
> -- e.g., a 60-minute program may take 75 minutes to commflag.  (It's  
> not so nice for max bitrate 720p HD-PVR recordings, where it runs at  
> about 40% realtime speed.)  Regarding huge DB lookups, I find that  
> to be disk-bound rather than CPU-bound.
>
> In my opinion, the biggest problems with the ION as a combined BE/FE  
> are the physical factors.  You get an ION because you want a small,  
> quiet, low-power box.  Adding hard drives and tuners works against  
> that, and pretty soon you're better off with a "traditional" build.

Single 1-2TB drive and a usb tuner or hdhomerun wouldn't make such a  
bad all-in-one ion-based system, if you ask me. I might have a better  
opinion of how realistic that is after my ion board (and misc  
components) show up next week... Of course, mine is intending to be  
primarily just a frontend with a small ssd in it.

Going with a Morex Venus 668B case, Antec Veris Premiere character LCD/ 
front panel buttons, Zotac ION N330 board, 2GB cheap-RAM-of-the-day  
and a 30GB OCZ Vertex SSD. Should be fun to play with...

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com