<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Johnny <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jarpublic@gmail.com">jarpublic@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">> There has been quite a bit of discussion of SD boxes, recently.<br>
><br>
> But I'm thinking about building a HD box, and I was wondering<br>
> about what folks are using for HD front ends these days.<br>
<br>
</div>The ION systems are popular recently. There has been several lengthy<br>
threads on them on the list recently. The Zotac ION boards are<br>
particularly popular at around $200 they can use VDPAU to playback HD<br>
content smoothly. They are low power and can be fanless with the right<br>
versions. By most accounts it is the ideal mythtv frontend.</blockquote><div><br>FWIW, My Zotac ION (dual-core version) plays back ATSC MPEG2 HD smoothly without enabling VDPAU. Judging by the relatively small amount of CPU usage it takes, I'd assume the single-core version would play smoothly as well.<br>
<br>I've not tried h264 HD on it.<br></div></div>