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

Mark Lord mythtv at rtr.ca
Wed Oct 12 18:32:45 UTC 2011


On 11-10-12 12:05 PM, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
..
> Power consumption is not my goal (although it's nice gravy) but rather
> small enough to hide behind the wall mounted TV and (for all intents and
> purposes) silent).  Big honking 400W (or even 250W) PSes with fans don't
> fit that profile.

I have now assembled two systems based on the Zotac ZBOX line.
The first is a HD-ID11 acting as combined backend/frontend
with 250GB internal hard drive and a single HVR-950Q USB tuner.
Works perfectly -- silky smooth Advanced/2X playback during record/commskip.

The second is very similar, using a Zotac HD-ID41 nettop.
Slightly faster CPU, plus USB3 (not used yet), otherwise pretty similar.
Again, a single HVR-950Q USB tuner and running combined BE/FE.

Both are tiny systems that can use the included brackets to mount
behind a TV or monitor, and are perfect for basic PVR and video playback.

Storage on both is expandable, with a larger capacity internal drive
and/or more fast external drives over eSATA, USB3, and/or USB2.
I tested record/playback over USB2, and that worked quite well.

The number of tuners can be expanded, probably up to 3-4 USB tuners,
but the bottleneck would then become horsepowe for commskip flagging.

Of course, the same boxes would make great FE-only machines too.
For TV, they're as future-proof as that new LCD screen in the rec room is.
More so, actually, since the TV really only knows how to deal with MPEG2 TS.

Cheers


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list