<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
> On 03/06/2013, at 8:00 PM, <a href="mailto:mythtv-users-request@mythtv.org">mythtv-users-request@mythtv.org</a> wrote:<br>
><br>
> >>> I guess I am a bit disappointed we don't have <<10 watt machines<br>
> >>> today that can do all this easily. The first ION stuff came out 4<br>
> >>> years ago and Moore's law should have solved this by now. :)<br>
<br>
It is a problem using Intel CPUs and PC video boards. Most current<br>
phones can do 1080p decode now and they can do it for several hours on a<br>
battery with only a couple of Watt/Hours of energy; that is for control,<br>
decode, display + backlight, audio and the whole ball of wax. In other<br>
words, a complete HD viewer can consume around a watt with shipping 2013<br>
level tech.<br>
<br>
Yet no 'PC' style machine, no matter the price, silent or loud, can<br>
manage to run a Myth frontend without consuming several watts just for<br>
the compute portion, no display, audio, etc. Forget playing video, you<br>
would be hard pressed to get an Intel solution to idle at 1W, even<br>
suspended power drain is often more than 1W. Heck, S5 powered down byt<br>
watching the network or keyboard for events usually draws more than 1W.<br>
I doubt you could build a PC that doesn't waste a watt in the power<br>
supply alone.<br>
<br>
The answer is to get a good stable Linux port with fully accelerated<br>
video onto one of the little ARM boxes that normally ship with Android<br>
and then get Mythfrontend running on that. If Mythfrontend ever gets so<br>
big that it can't run well on a quadcore and 2GB ram things have totally<br>
went off the rails. :)<br>
<br>
If using a hardware encoder/tuner (a HD Homerun, or comparable) I can't<br>
see why one of the little ARM boxes with SATA couldn't host a combined<br>
FE/BE system complete with MythWeb. Transcoding might not be too<br>
practical and even commercial detection might be a problem. Would be an<br>
interesting experiment though.<br>
<br>
TVs are getting enough grunt in them that we might want to just put the<br>
frontend there. Of course all the new sets with lots of CPU also lock<br>
the bootloader because the reason for the beefy CPU is to load it up<br>
with players for as many subscription streaming services that the<br>
manufacturer can sign deals with. Bleh.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>I wonder if any of these would fit the bill: <a href="http://dx.com/c/consumer-electronics-199/hd-media-players-103/android-hd-players-191">http://dx.com/c/consumer-electronics-199/hd-media-players-103/android-hd-players-191</a>. I know Ubuntu will install on some android phones/devices... though I'm not sure how it would work on these.</div>
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