[mythtv-users] Frontend Appliance, Maybe

[Michael T. Dean]

On 02/05/2013 12:38 AM, Ken Mink wrote:
> 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
>>
>
>
> 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

FWIW, you may want to hold off until you've gotten some feedback from 
others who are trying to use the CrystalHD.  AIUI, support for it in 
MythTV isn't very good as the drivers aren't very good and the 
manufacturer doesn't seem to be at all interested in supporting the 
device, anymore.

Mike