[mythtv-users] Secrets for low powered front ends ?

[Raymond Wagner]

On 10/12/2011 04:58, PJR wrote:
>
> On 12/10/11 00:33, Nick Rout wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 11:53 AM, Raymond Wagner<raymond at wagnerrp.com>  wrote:
>>> On 10/11/2011 17:37, Richard Morton wrote:
>>>> Don't forget that the people that know (the devs) don't recommend
>>>> ion/nvidia/vdpau systems because they are very codec/encoding
>>>> dependant. With that said I have a early dualcore atom
>>>>
>>> We absolutely do recommend nVidia hardware, and we don't try to dissuade
>>> people from VDPAU.  What we are recommending against is people buying
>>> ION systems, thinking hardware decoding is the end-all solution to
>>> everything, without knowing its potentially severe limitations.
>> In terms of future proofing you are probably right in that the
>> broadcasters coulepotentially change their encoding streams at any
>> time, but wouldn't that also stuff up many STBs?
> What are the severe limitations of ION systems? Is it only that the
> encoding streams may change? What are the others? I'm just about to buy
> an ION2 board and I don't want to make a mistake.

The severe limitations are simply that you're not getting a worthwhile 
processor.  Hardware decoding is inherently inflexible.  You have 
whatever capability was burned into it during fabrication, and that's 
it.  Should you ever want to do anything the decoder is not capable of, 
you have to fall back on the CPU, but in the case of an Atom, it does 
not have sufficient power to handle whatever you want in software.