[mythtv-users] Cheap front end?

[Bryan Halter]

R. G. Newbury wrote:

>Bryan Halter wrote:
>  
>
>>Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 05:24:52PM -0500, Bryan Halter wrote:
>>>  
>>>      
>>>
>>>>I've been looking at those too.  From what I've seen I'd go with a 
>>>>fanless SP which comes with built in MPEG4 decoding in addition to 
>>>>MPEG2.  There is Unichrome project support for both decoders last I 
>>>>heard.  This becomes important if you want to display HD content.
>>>>    
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Source and price on those?
>>>-- j
>>>  
>>>      
>>>
>>You can get the CL board you were looking at here:
>>
>> http://www.iboxpc.com/shopping/product.php?productid=9&cat=10&page=1
>>
>>for about $160 and you can get the SP here:
>>
>>http://www.iboxpc.com/shopping/product.php?productid=201&cat=10&page=2
>>
>>or the fanless variant here:
>>
>>http://www.iboxpc.com/shopping/product.php?productid=200&cat=10&page=2
>>
>>for $205.  Please note I have no affiliation that I know of with 
>>iboxpc.com they just happened to be one of the only vendors listed on 
>>the VIA Embedded website that actually sells the SP board.
>>    
>>
>
>If you are looking for a board of this sort, you may want to check out  
>via's other offerings. There is a new motherboard out which has a VT1625 
>tv video out chipset instead of the VT1623 which is in the SP13000. The 
>VT1625 is noted as being able to do "HD TV".
>
>The VT1623 in the SP13000 does SD TV through the S-video out plug, 
>directly from the motherboard.
>
>I have been completely unable to find out any more information about the 
>capabilities of the board with the VT1625 but it sounds very very much 
>like something I would like.
>Note that this motherboard really requires hardware-capable encoding 
>cards, such as the PVR500 and HD3000. The former does the encoding on 
>board. The latter of course, does not have to do so, for digital MPEG 
>streams. HD level output is another matter.
>
>In a nutshell, these make a fantastic quiet backend or a fantastic quite 
>frontend, but not for HD *** at the present time****.  The next version 
>may remove that last proviso.
>
>My System:  SP13000 with PVR500, pcHD3000 in Silverstone LC11M case with 
>Via's PCI riser and a flexible PCI extension cable, 512M RAM, 120G SATA 
>hard drive, DVD+RW reader-writer driven from cable tv feed.  About 28 
>unencrypted digital channels from Rogers Cable, Toronto, and 70 analog 
>channels available to the PVR500. (Supposedly about 12 HD channels 
>available around here OTA...but I have no antenna YET.)
>
>Geoff
>
>
>
> 
>
>       R. Geoffrey Newbury			
>     Barrister and Solicitor
> Suite 106, 150 Lakeshore Road West
>    Mississauga, Ontario, L5H 3R2
>
>  905-271-9600  Fax 905-271-1638
>       newbury at mandamus.org
>
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>  
>
THANK YOU...I'd asked about highdef and the SP before and not gotten 
anything really definitive