[mythtv-users] myth front end on new mac mini core 2 duo?

Damian Haslam damian at dickson.st
Thu Mar 19 02:50:35 UTC 2009


Thanks Jason - that's very helpful. Do you know what encodings the various
HD channels you listed below have? And their bitrate?

And a more basic question - does the HDMI output have sound, or do you
need to use the TOSLink thing?

>
>> Wait doesn't the "Quartz" acceleration option automatically use OS X's
>> built in GPU
>> acceleration?  The latest Leopard I thought integrated that
>> functionality right into
>> the video API.
>
> I did a bit more testing tonight to see what I could see.
>
> In the playback settings, I set the decoder to be "Mac hardware
> accelleration".  This gave choices of "quartz accel" and "opengl3" for the
> Video Renderer and the OSD Renderer.  No choices were available for
> de-interlacing.
>
> In all cases with Quartz, playback was smooth and seemed OK.  It was
> definitely better than whatever it defaulted to.  The lack of
> deinterlacing was noticeable especially for SD and some HD content.
>
> For various content types, here's some CPU load info:
>
> SD (704x480):  ~15%
> HD (CBS - 1920x1080):  ~70%
> HD (Fox - 1280x720):  ~60%
> HD (FoodNet - 1920x1080):  ~60%
> MKV (1280x720):  ~80%
> DVD-ISO (720x480):  ~20%
>
> I also noted that bringing up the program guide would inspire a frontend
> crash.  Not sure why this was.  The frontend version is relatively recent
> (r20215 from the -fixes branch).
>
> For me, though, the lack of deinterlacing would be the deal-breaker for
> the OS X frontend.  The lower res content looked like teh poo.
>
> Personally, I've got more Linux background than OS X, so in the short
> term, bending a Linux system to my will is a lot easier than trying to get
> everything working in OS X.
>
> That said, the new mini is more than capable of taking on what's thrown at
> it.  Even if the accelleration can't help, there's enough CPU oomph to get
> you by.
>
> The linux install I already have done on a 2nd partition with bootcamp is
> pretty easy, too.  I was able to shrink the OSX partition and put a 10GB
> linux drive on there with no real problems.  (rEFIT had some troubles
> seeing the boot CD, but a couple restarts got it to recognize it.)
>
> From a power consumption perspective, this is what I observed on my
> killawatt:
>
> Max during boot:  30W
> Mythfrontend Idle (Linux):  17W
> Mythfrontend Idle (OSX):  15W
> Mythfrontend Playback (Linux - no VDPAU):  22 - 25W (depends on content)
> Mythfrontend Playback (OSX - Quartz enabled): 20 - 30W (depends on
> content)
>
> It's pretty close to the AppleTV I have, but it does peak higher.  I won't
> be surprised at all if the VDPAU playback consumption i close to 30 like
> the Quartz enabled playback under OSX.
>
>
> I hope this is helpful to everyone.  I'm going to stick with my boy,
> Linux!  :)
>
> Jason
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