[mythtv-users] Frontend for home theater

[Drew Tomlinson]

On 11/4/2005 5:18 PM Michael Tiller wrote:

> Here are a few questions:


[snip]

> 5) I'd like this to be as cheap as possible (WAF).  If I'm just using 
> the frontend to playback DVDs and programs recorded on a backend, I 
> assume I can get by with some pretty low end specs.  Since I only need 
> to do playback, I suppose a PIII could probably fit the bill although 
> I suspect that might actually be hard to find.  I have this thought in 
> my head that someday I'll have HD quality recordings on my backend.  
> What does it take to get HDTV playback (only) for a frontend.  The 
> MythTV site mentions some kind of NVIDIA acceleration?  I probably 
> can't afford to protect for this capability but it doesn' t hurt to at 
> least understand the tradeoff.


 From what I've gathered reading this list for the past 9 months, it's 
the frontend that needs the horsepower unless the backend is encoding 
real time. Then they both need horsepower.   However with the PVR-x50 
cards and their built-in hardware encoders, very few boxes are encoding 
real-time using their CPU.  And then with ATSC signal, it is already 
digital and is just streamed to disk.  The only time a backend uses much 
horse power is during commercial flagging or transcoding.  But since 
neither is real time, it just becomes a matter of how long you want to 
wait.  :)

On the other hand, the frontend needs to be fairly powerful to decode 
ATSC signals and display them real time.  It seems the estimates I've 
seen are for a minimum of 2ghz with 2.5 being more acceptable.

Cheers,

Drew

-- 
Visit The Alchemist's Warehouse
Magic Tricks, DVDs, Videos, Books, & More!

http://www.alchemistswarehouse.com