[mythtv-users] epia vs PVR-350 hardware decoding

[Kevin Bowen]

Hello all,
For awhile I've been looking into building a small form factor/quiet myth box, which, considering the low CPU power of these kinds of systems, will probably require hardware encoding/decoding... the PVR-250 support looks like it solved the encoding part, but from what I've been able to discern from reading the list, there's no support yet for hardware decoding - both the PVR-350 and the EPIA's mpeg2 decoder are currently unsupported. So my question is, does anyone who has been following the development of the necessary drivers have a rough idea of when it might be reasonable to expect they might be ready and myth-supported? Anytime soon, or far off in the future?

Second related question: assuming neither is going to be supported in the near future, how much processing power is needed to run myth smoothly, assuming hardware encoding? Would one of the new EPIA boxes with a PVR-250 cut it with the decoding being done in software?

Any thought appreciated,

Kevin Bowen