[mythtv-users] koolu frontend

[James Orr]

On 9/18/07, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
>
> James Orr wrote:
> > I'm thinking about separating my backend from my frontend.  They are
> > currently combined, but it gets a little noisy sometimes.
> >
> > I found this as a possible frontend ... http://www.koolu.com/
> > <http://www.koolu.com/>
> >
> > I searched the list and was quite surprised not to get any hits as it
> > even has a mythtv frontend running in the product demo video.
> >
> > Obviously this box won't have the horse-power for playing back HD, but
> > that is not a concern for me at the moment, or indeed for the forseeable
> > future.
> >
> > Is anybody using one of these?  The one downside I see is that I use
> > MythDVD as my main DVD player, and this obviously does not have a DVD
> > player in it.  I could use an external USB DVD player, does anybody know
> > how well those work under Linux?
>
> Hmmm... A 500Mhz. CPU is right on the edge of being able to decode
> DVD-quality MPEG2 without any hardware assistance, and that assumes
> highly-optimized software.
>
> Obviously you couldn't use a PCI capture device, but USB or even a HDHR
> might be a possibility.
>
> I'm not familiar with the LX800 graphics, but I'd guess it doesn't offer
> any help with MPEG playback.
>
> It might work, for SD, then again it might not.
>
> No way to tell except for some brave (or well-financed) soul to try it
> out.


The plan is to move my current frontend/backend to the basement along with
the two cable boxes and then run it as a backend only, so I won't need any
form of capture device on the new frontend.

My first mythtv box was a celeron 466, and that was capable of playback and
recording at the same time with no problem, but DVD playback stuttered a
little.

However, I just noticed there is no composite or s-video out on the koolu,
only VGA, and convertors are expensive enough that it seems more cost
effective to look for other solutions.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20070918/2d9dd4b7/attachment.htm