[mythtv-users] Frontend Appliance, Maybe

[Ken Mink]

On 02/04/2013 09:59 PM, Ben Healy wrote:
>> Hello All,
>> There's been a number of posts about low power or small frontend
>> boxes. I thought I'd share some info on my current project and get some
>> feedback on the viability of it.
>>
>> Years ago I used 1st gen AppleTVs as MythTV Frontend boxes. They
>> were small, quiet, and reasonably cheap. They have a NVidia GPU that was
>> supported by XvMC. However, they could only handle up to 720p and there
>> was no support for HDMI audio. With XvMC being EOL'ed in Myth and more
>> and more 1080(i/p) content, I switched to NVidia ION based frontends. I
>> tried, unsuccessfully, to sell my ATV1s and they ended up on the parts
>> shelf.
>>
>> I recently I discovered that a lot of ATV1s were being re-purposed
>> as XMBC boxes by replacing the Mini-PCIe WiFi cards with a CrystalHD
>> cards. I prefer the MythTV frontend to XBMC(just a personal preference).
>> Since MythTV supports CrystalHD, I figured I give a whirl. I currently
>> have Ubuntu 12.04lts with MythTV 0.25.3 and NVidia 304 running on a
>> ATV1. MythTV is playing SD recordings fine with HDMI audio. I haven't
>> tackled LIRC yet, I'm just using a keyboard.
>>
>> I haven't ordered a CrystalHD card yet. How is MythTV's support
>> for CrystalHD? I've been googling and there's not too much info. It all
>> seems to relate to XBMC.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Ken
> Hi Ken
>
> I read this list for years and just subscribed today to reply to your post. I am very interested in trying this out. I have just purchased an ATV and Crystal HD card to try out xbmc, but would love to try out MythFrontend.
>
> Any info would be appreciated in how you have gone about what you have done so far.
>
> Thanks
> Ben
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Hi Ben,
   I think I'm going to order the CrystalHD card and see how it goes. 
I've stripped as much memory usage out as I can. With the frontend 
playing a recording, there's no swap usage. Considering the box has 
256MB, that's doing pretty good. I'm not sure what lircd and the 
crystalhd driver will add, but I think it'll work.

Ken