<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 2/27/08, <b class="gmail_sendername">Richard Bronosky</b> <<a href="mailto:BrunosJunk@bronosky.com">BrunosJunk@bronosky.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">It's time to bury this system <a href="http://www.bronosky.com/?p=21">http://www.bronosky.com/?p=21</a> And one<br>
thing I learned from my first MythTV build is that I should start with<br>reliable video hardware support and build backwards. I'm going to<br>separate the FE and BE this time to optimize the playback experience.<br>
Here is what I am thinking.<br><br>1. I'd prefer low power consumption. (which adds the side benefits of<br>low heat and low noise)<br>2. I'd like to use VIA cpu, but I am not dead-set on it.<br>3. It must be able to playback HD from an HDHomeRun (MPEG2 TS)<br>
4. It must be able to output an industry standard 720p and 1080i<br>signal so my HDTV will "just work" like it does with my $40 upsampling<br>DVD player</blockquote>
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<div>If you are building a separate FE - I'd seriously consider an Apple Mac Mini. I have one as a frontend and it is brilliant. It's VERY low noise (my plasma screen is louder), it plays HD, 'just works' with a HDTV (mine at least), and it has optical audio out. I run mine on Fedora 8 which installed without any hassles. If you are so inclined you can dual boot into Apple OSX mode (and even run myth - but I prefer myth under Linux).</div>
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