[mythtv-users] System specifications review...

[Michael T. Dean]

On 11/16/2009 02:27 PM, Johnny wrote:
> With regards to your power question, on the one extreme you could save
> a lot of power by not having a mythtv system, or having a smaller TV.
> My point being that the real question you are interested in is not
> just will a discrete VDPAU card cost me extra energy, but will the
> benefits be worth the extra energy. I agree with Mike that you aren't
> likely going to save power by doing the decoding/rendering in your
> GPU.

with a discrete video card added to a system with integrated graphics.  
If you instead get a system with integrated VDPAU-capable graphics, you 
likely will save some (small?) amount of power using VDPAU--though that 
savings may be countered by differences in chipset power consumption 
compared to choosing a chipset based on power usage rather than choosing 
a chipset based on VDPAU capability.

>  But VDPAU does do a really good job at deinterlacing (better than
> most TVs and much better than any of the software deinterlacers) and
> for most people the increased picture quality is worth it. It varies
> for everybody depending on your TV set and type of recordings etc. But
> for me the benefit was dramatic and I personally wouldn't go any other
> way than with VDPAU. And at $30-$50 for a card I think it is worth the
> initial investment to see what you think of the image quality. Worst
> case you sell the card.

And, if you do use the "shut down when not in use" approaches in MythTV 
(MythWelcome/mythshutdown for a combined frontend/backend system or 
MythWelcome on all frontends and the new-in-0.22 "let the master backend 
shut down remote backends and mythshutdown for the master backend), 
you'll get the most power savings possible--likely /much/ more than 
through any other method. :)

Mike