[mythtv-users] Super Micro X7SLA Atom server board for backend

[Herman Gerritsen]

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Justyn Butler
<justynbutler at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Sorry, perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by streaming. On my
> setup, the backend sends the recorded digital television to the
> frontend, and this is not processor intensive. Neither is recording.
> It's all digital and decoding only happens on the frontend.
> Transcoding and advert detection do happen on my backend though.
>
I think the misunderstanding is on my side ;)
I just recently started (restarted actually) my efforts to get
a Mythtv setup running, and I am not yet succesfull :(
So I mix up terminolgy and i am not yet fully aware of mythtvs capabilities.

> I suspect an Atom could still do the advert detection, it would just
> be slower. But on my system it does advert detection at night anyway
> so I don't think that would matter.
figured advert detection would happen during recording.
To do at a later moment sounds much better. :)

>>>Atom chip, and the GMA 950 chipset. It plays mythfrontend
>>>*beautifully*, nearly as well as my Core Duo machine. Thats SD content
>>>though, we don't get HD at the moment.
>> An Atom in a frontend seems more logical because of its low power useage.
>> Less power, less heat, less cooling, less noise ;)
>> Though you say that it plays "nearly" as well, I would have thought
>> it would play one stream without any problem.
>> Is the processor the bottleneck in this case?
> Sorry, to clarify, it plays perfectly. There is essentially no
> difference between the frontend on each system, except that
> mythfrontend takes longer to load on the Atom netbook. Also when you
> click "play" on a recording, it takes maybe half a second longer to
> get going. That kind of thing. Playback itself isn't effected.
Ah, than the Atom remains interesting :)

> I'm personally not as concerned about power usage on a frontend as on
> a backend because the backend is on literally all the time. Every
> extra 15 watts of power on the backend is an extra 11kWh/month. My
> frontend on the other hand is suspended when not being watched.
I have been reading on "http://www.lesswatts.org/" a while ago
The so called "race to idle" with a high powered processor is also
a very good way to conserve energy, in some cases better than
using a low power processor that takes longer.
But I would not have any idea on how this works for mythtv.

Herman