[mythtv-users] Latest thoughts on small silent frontends

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sun, 9 Mar 2014 08:42:51 -0400, you wrote:

>
>
>> On Mar 9, 2014, at 8:29 AM, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sat, 8 Mar 2014 18:30:47 -0500, you wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Mar 8, 2014, at 4:30 PM, Chris Lewis <chrislewis915 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hi
>>>> 
>>>> I'm about to dedicate my current combined BE/FE to being a BE only. I want to add a couple of dedicated frontends to the system.
>>>> 
>>>> So what are the options for small cheap silent hd capable devices?
>>>> 
>>>> Has any work been done on getting the raspberry pi to work? Or some other arm based system?
>>>> 
>>>> If not what's best at the moment
>>>> 
>>>> Chris
>>> I have 3 of these and they work great. 
>>> 
>>> http://www.asus.com/EeeBox_PCs/EeeBox_PC_EB1033/
>>> 
>>> Greg Thompson
>> 
>> I would have thought that the Nvidia 610 in one of those was not
>> sufficiently capable of doing 1080i.  I know that when I got my Nvidia
>> 220, Nvidia 210s were not able to do 1080i properly, and I thought
>> that same pattern of the cheapest chip(s) in the range not being able
>> to do proper deinterlacing of HD continued through all the subsequent
>> generations of Nvidia chips.  Most video hardware options now will
>> handle 1080p and all the non-interlaced formats just fine.  But for
>> 1080i HD you need something capable of doing advanced 2x
>> deinterlacing, and that seems to need more (or better) shaders than
>> you get in the lowest Nvidia chips.  If the main CPU can handle the
>> deinterlacing, or you can get your TV to do it, then it would work
>> fine.  But an Atom CPU is not that capable.  So I think at least an
>> Nvidia 630 is what is required.
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>It handles all the interlacing options at 1080p just fine. 

Yes, that is exactly what I said - a 610 will do progressive modes
just fine.  Progressive modes such as 1080p are not interlaced.  So
progressive modes do not use lots of the hardware in an Nvidia
chipset, as they are easy to display, despite having higher bandwidth
than the matching interlaced display.  It is the deinterlacing that is
the problem.  My understanding is that the deinterlacing is done
(under driver control?) using the shader hardware.  The shader
hardware is not used for progressive video output.  And on a 610,
there is not sufficient shader hardware to do the advanced 2x
deinterlacing that is needed for a fully smooth 1080i HD display.

>See card status on this page. 
>https://github.com/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.tv.git

I could not find any card status on that page.

>
>Greg Thompson

Perhaps you do not record any 1080i programs, so you never have met
the deinterlacing problems?  There are places in the world where 1080i
is not used.