[mythtv-users] What's the best HD frontend only hardware?

[Steve Curtis]

On 29/02/2008, Mike Isely <isely at isely.net> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Nicolas Will wrote:
>
> I've just yesterday put online a new dedicated FE box that should do
> everything you are describing except perhaps the H.264 part.
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856110065
>
>
I've not seen that system before.  I'm also in market for a good FE HD box.
I've been upgrading my combined BE/FE to;

AMD 6400 in an Abit NFM2S
Pinnacle Nvidia 7600GT in the PCI-E slot
Booting off an IDE, videos stored on a Samsung Spinpoint SATA2 Disk
1Gb of DDR2 800 Matched

I'm running this with Nvidia drivers with XvMC on connected to a 42" 1080P
Sharp display using DVI -> HDMI cable on Mythbuntu.  MythTV works great,
though I'm in the UK so I don't get any OTA HD content.

However, It struggles with 1080P content from MythVideo - and its
frustrating!  I'm using latest stable Mplayer for H264 content and I still
get major jitter on 1080p videos (less so on 720P).  I can't figure out
what's wrong, CPU usage bounces around the low numbers, but I think I may be
maxing one of the cores in busy scenes.

I'm thinking of making that box a dedicated BE, and then putting in-place a
dedicated FE so am in the market for a good 1080P machine.

Would you be able to test a 1080P H264 content on your system and see if you
get _smooth_ playback, no jitter on slow pan shots?

For UK users, I just came across this site too..

http://efficientpc.co.uk/

Looks interesting.

Ok, I'll stop rambling now..

Cheers,
Steve.
--
Steve Curtis [scurtis at fixation.net]
Fixation Networks Ltd
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