[mythtv-users] Quiet cheap frontend for 1080p

[R. G. Newbury]

On 10/05/2012 02:22 AM, Nick Rout wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 5:02 PM, Pieter De Wit<pieter at insync.za.net>  wrote:
> Not sure whether it's gonna play 1080p on mythtv though!
>
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On 5/10/2012, at 16:13, MonkeyPet<monkeypet at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>> Anyone have a suggestion? I want a quiet mythtv frontend capable of doing
>> 1080p. Fanless is preferred, but if it is really quiet that will be okay.
>> Small enough to be set top box. Also want it cheap so I can buy multiple. No
>> I don't want media players since I already own two and I also like the

I bought an early Zotac ION after seeing the nvidia reference board at 
CES 2009.

Any of the ION's will play 1080p just fine using vdpau. You will want at 
least 2Gig of Ram, since the video ram comes out of the main ram space, 
but that's really the only gotcha.
I did not try it as an FE only but I suspect that you can get away with 
USB or SD memory if it is just an FE. The heavy lifting is done by the 
BE box.

Playing 1080p OTA files it ran at 28 watts according to the Kill-A-Watt.

The board has been my VOIP server since September 2009 and at one point 
I had 325 days uptime.

Geoff