[mythtv-users] ION "LE" suitable for FE/ slave BE?

[James D. Goddard]

On 11/10/09 9:29 AM, "Johnny" <jarpublic at gmail.com> wrote:

>> What is it that makes something "a great Myth FE box", as opposed to "
>> greate Myth FE/BE box"?
>> 
> 
> The frontend priorities are usually, HD playback, small, quiet, etc.
> The backend priorities are usually disk space, disk I/O, CPU/RAM
> (transcoding, comm-flagging, database). The recently released nvidia
> ION systems tend to meet the priorites of a FE better than what we
> have had in the past and they hit a better price point. Having
> hardware accelerated video with VDPAU means the system can use a low
> heat, low power CPU (Intel Atom). So the whole system can be very
> small and quiet and still playback HD H264 material. However being
> very small and having a less powerful CPU doesn't tend to be ideal for
> a BE, but some make it work in very simple setups.

I have a question regarding these Atom/IONs.

I have a decent fe/be, and won't be changing it anytime soon ($$ and WAF).

What I was considering was trying to buy an ION, perhaps one of the Revos,
or one based on the Zotac ION-ITX-F that has a PCI-e slot (if I can find a
mini-ITX case that has an expansion slot), and put a tuner in it as a slave
frontend.  I am not entirely clear what extra services need to run on the
slave backend, if the master backend is hosting the database and storage.
Seems that for another few dollars, it would be great to be able to add an
extra tuner, and I have a cable drop already in the bedroom.

Any clue as to whether they would stand up to a slave backend load?

Thanks

Jim

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