I have one of these boxes. While it works gread as a UPnP client, it would be great to have it work as a real myth frontend.<br><br>The box is totally silent (no fan, no disk) and I was impressed when I plugged it in to my network, and before I had the chance to hit the setup button on the remote, it showed my mythbox as a UPnP server. It plays both standard def and high def recordings. I've not hooked up the optical SPDIF connector to my amp, so I can't be sure how well that works, but I assume it does.
<br><br>Myth's UPnP server doesn't seem to allow access to my video files (only recordings) so I installed wizd as a UPnP server for my video and music collection. This works ok as well, but I have not been able to get full ISO playback. I can play back individual titles, but not the menus.
<br><br>The worst part about the box is the navigation capabilities. I am so used to the myth user interface that some of the navigation is clumsy at best. Everything seems to navigate in terms of percentages instead of time (hit the right arrow go forward 1%, hit 8, go to 80% of the way through the file).
<br><br>Also as someone stated, there is no digital video out, but I have hooked the component outpu up to my HDTV and HD content looks very good that way.<br><br>Inside the box there is an 8621L from Sigma Designs, 4 Meg of Flash, 64 Meg of RAM (I think), a Realtek ethernet chip, a VIA USB controller, and a mini PCI slot (for the wireless card that they sell for another 30 bucks). There are empty targets for an IDE connector and disk drive power connecter, as well a few other connectors that aren't obvious to me.
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 5/1/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Todd Ignasiak</b> <<a href="mailto:ignasiak@gmail.com">ignasiak@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On 5/1/07, Jason Sullivan <<a href="mailto:jason0x21@gmail.com">jason0x21@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>> On 5/1/07, stuart <<a href="mailto:stuart@xnet.com">stuart@xnet.com</a>> wrote:<br>> A bit of reading on the Galaxy website shows that these devices already do UPnP.
<br>><br>> <a href="http://www.galaxymetalgear.com/Products/3500IPTV.html">http://www.galaxymetalgear.com/Products/3500IPTV.html</a><br>><br>> So with a UPnP enabled MythTV backend, they should "just work", just
<br>> not as a mythTV frontend. If you wanted to run the frontend on the<br>> box, someone would have get one to see how much horsepower was inside,<br>> as the specs on the webpage don't lend much of a clue.
<br>><br>> The other things it doesn't say, besides raw horsepower: how much<br>> onboard memory, and the video chipset. Those determine if it's even<br>> possible to run the frontend on the machine.<br>
> Other questions that come to mind are: Can it netboot? Could I slip a<br>> hard-drive in it? The answer to both might be "yes", but it's hard to<br>> tell how much hacking would be required.<br>
<br>The specs say it's based on Sigma Designs video decoder (e.g. 8621L,<br>as mentioned in the review linked earlier in this thread). It's not a<br>standard GPU, it's an MPEG decoder. So, if the box does have enough
<br>RAM to run myth, and storage to hold the executable (or access over a<br>network), myth would require modification to output via that decoder.<br>The specs for that decoder may or may not be available. But, it does<br>
look like a very interesting option for a UPnP frontend.<br><br>I have seen mentions of several other UPnP clients being used with<br>MythTV, but no detailed information. What would be useful is a Wiki<br>page detailing UPnP clients with details about how well they work with
<br>MythTV and perform other common functions like DVD playback, JPEG<br>picture viewing, music playback, etc. As people try devices like<br>this one, they can fill in the details about if it works with MythTV,<br>and how well it works.
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