[mythtv-users] Latest thoughts on small silent frontends

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sun, 9 Mar 2014 09:41:55 -0400, you wrote:

>
>On Mar 9, 2014, at 9:24 AM, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
>> 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.
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>
>Per the Wiki
>VDPAU Playback Profiles are automatically created in current versions.
>VDPAU High Quality: use Temporal Spatial 2X (Advanced 2X) for all content. To be used with nvidia cards >= 8600GT, >= 9500GT, GT120 or >= GT220
>
>
>And I do pretty much exclusively record 1080i
 Comcast Cable with Cable Card (Ceton Tuner)
>
>Greg

So that is good news - the cheaper Nvidia 610 chipset is OK for 1080i,
so it is easy to get a silent video card for any frontend box.