[mythtv-users] New frontend... Atom?

[Yeechang Lee]

Brian J. Murrell <brian at interlinx.bc.ca> says:
> Yeah.  Either way, I am upgrading more than I really need just to
> use one new piece of hardware.  The memory, CPU and motherboard are
> perfectly acceptable, otherwise.  Even more so with VDPAU.

[...]

> No, but to be land-fill ready simply because of wanting one new
> component, not because the whole thing has fried out is just wasteful.

[...]

> Athlon 800 here for my FE/BE, and it's being doing just fine until just
> recently where I've put a third tuner into it and now it struggles
> slightly when recording (and commflagging at least one of them) 3
> programs and playing SD at the same time on the Nvidia 5200 in there.

You're contradicting yourself. Forget the "planned obsolence" part;
you're asking your old computer to do more and find that it can't
handle the additional load. That's a separate issue from "upgrading
more than I really need . . . is just wasteful."

> You can see why I want VDPAU.  :-) Sadly it doesn't seem to be even
> available (as in produced, by anyone) on any video card with an AGP
> interface.  :-(

I keep seeing mention of PCI-based VDPAU cards on the list, and
understand they generally work pretty well, although I don't know how
expensive they are.

There's no free lunch and four years in the computer world is like 20
years for cars. If my four years-old Pentium 4 didn't have a PCI-E
slot I wouldn't have been able to install a $40 PCI-E VDPAU-capable
card (barring a PCI-based VDPAU card, which again I don't have any
experience with). So what? I'd simply continue, as I have since day
one back in late 2005, to play 1080i and 720p recordings via the
software decoder. I wouldn't be able to play h.264 HD-PVR recordings,
but then I've yet to actually use my revision-C1 HD-PVR since I don't
have access to a Windows XP/Vista machine to install firmware on it so
it's a moot issue. VDPAU simply gives me now the capability of playing
those recordings when the times comes, that's all.

-- 
Frontend/backend:	P4 3.0GHz, 1.5TB software RAID 5 array
Backend:		Quad-core Xeon 1.6GHz, 6.6TB sw RAID 6
Video inputs:		Four high-definition over FireWire/OTA
Accessories:		47" 1080p LCD, 5.1 digital, and MX-600