<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Reynolds, Brian <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Brian.Reynolds@fiserv.com">Brian.Reynolds@fiserv.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
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Keep in mind that Myth appears to add higher costs for the front-end<br>
hardware. I can get Media Center Extenders for about $100 each. Can I<br>
build a Myth front-end for $100 that will play HD content?<br></blockquote><div><br>I was about to say that i thought there was a thread about refurb acer revo systems for $99 on here, but on reflection it might have been $199.<br>
<br>If you want low power and cute frontends the current entry level seems to be nvidia ion chipsets - mainly because the ion is cheap and will do vdpau which is hardware decoding of mpeg-2 and h.264 video. the revo I refer to above is an ion machine. Don't forget that these are full computers, so can be put to other uses - eg if you want to do regular computing on it.<br>
<br>Now we will probably get into a debate about whether the ion is good enough, or whether you really want a better graphics card (eg an nvidia 430 or 220). Many people are very happy with their ion machines.<br><br>There are plenty of ways to skin the frontend cat, yes you can use a number of the networked media players - they won't do a full frontend that has all the frontend capabilities, but they will allow you to play recordings and watch videos. Scheduling recordings etc can be done via mythweb, or a computer running a full frontend. This type of networked box can, i believe, be had for around $100 in the US. I am unsure whether any of them double as MCE Extenders. (What i say above is a generalisation - before investing in one for mythtv do check back here to see about the pros and cons of various models).<br>
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