<p><br>
On Jul 30, 2011 4:55 PM, "jedi" <<a href="mailto:jedi@mishnet.org">jedi@mishnet.org</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 04:03:16PM -0500, Matt Garman wrote:<br>
> > On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 12:07:15PM -0700, Jason Long wrote:<br>
> > > I've been happy using zotac atom/ion boards for FE with vdpau...<br>
> > > Handles 1080p and 5.1 audio fine. Only ~15 watts idle, mini-itx,<br>
> > > quiet, USB thumb drive for the OS, or a SSD. My backend has quad<br>
> > > core for transcoding and commercial flagging and a redundant<br>
> > > storage array for the data, so it uses up quite a bit more power.<br>
> ><br>
> > Right, but my question is (cost aside) what's the advantage of an<br>
> > atom+ion over e.g. an i3-2100 system? They'll both have about the<br>
> > same power consumption at idle, but the latter gives you a lot more<br>
> > flexibility in terms of having a powerful general-purpose CPU,<br>
> > rather than a weak CPU and an application-specific GPU.<br>
> ><br>
> > And with the ion, you're messing with the proprietary nvidia drivers<br>
> > (which, to their credit, are generally pretty painless to install)<br>
> > and additional setup/configuration steps for making vdpau work.<br>
><br>
> Nvidia (and their blob driver) is still the best option even if<br>
> you aren't planning on using the GPU to play all of your video. That<br>
> sort of "overhead" is a bit of a constant regardless of what you decide<br>
> in terms of your CPU.<br>
><br>
> Have any of the other xorg drivers improved (like intel) when it comes<br>
> to dealing with HDTVs? I would be curious to see if using a modern intel<br>
> embedded GPU is even an option with brute force decoding.<br>
> </p>
<p>I just bought a new Mac mini with the base configuration last week and immediately installed Linux on it and it runs just fine as a frontend using CPU decoding with deinterlacing QAM recorded MPEG2 US TV. It runs a bit on the warm side but nothing too worrying.</p>
<p>And it does use the embedded Intel graphics card.</p>
<p>Deyan </p>