[mythtv-users] Motherboard / CPU recommendations

[Eric Sharkey]

On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Kenni Lund <kenni at kelu.dk> wrote:
> 2013/12/22 BobW <bob_pub_mailbox-mytv at yahoo.com>:
>> Does anyone know of any useful links or resources for selecting a
>> motherboard and CPU, (and video card), for a Mythtv, (Mythbuntu), build?
>> []
> Zotac D2550ITXS-B has an onboard GT610 and shares the fan between the
> CPU and the GPU. I use it in one of my frontends with VDPAU + advanced
> 2x as deinterlacer and it works nicely.
>
> I believe you can choose the -A version if you want to reuse an
> existing power supply.
>
> It only has an Atom CPU, but if you're only playing back video
> material which is supported by VDPAU, then you should be fine.

The Atom CPU is a bit controversial on this list.  Some people really
like them.  Some people like them for frontend only systems, with the
backend on a more capable machine.  And other people just plain hate
them all around.

I looked into Atom CPUs a while back and ended up coming to the
conclusion that they just weren't flexible enough.  None of my mythtv
systems are pure mythtv systems, in the sense that they're never asked
to do anything else.  So, really, there is no single "best" solution.
There are tradeoffs of performance, power, noise, cost, and size.  The
appropriate trade offs depends on your specific use cases.  Do you
want to do HTTP live streaming to transcode HD MPEG2 to MPEG4 for
delivery to a phone/tablet?  That's just plain not going to work on an
Atom CPU.  Do you only have one tuner capable of only receiving 5
channels and outputting video to an SD television?  Maybe you can get
by with just and Atom without even noticing the difference.

For me, I chose not to worry so much about size and cost and decided
to over-provision the CPU/ram/disk of the backend so I just don't need
to worry about having enough.

Eric