[mythtv-users] Output to h.264

[Brian Wood]

On Thursday, August 05, 2010 11:29:43 am mike at grounded.net wrote:
> Well, this is why I'm posting, to learn from input.
> It doesn't *have* to be H.264 but that is a good standard to use in that a
> lot of hardware supports this compression these days. There are packages
> out there which seem to bundle the audio and compression but this is where
> I start losing it.
> 
>  From what I can tell, even IPTV seems to have multiple sides in that the
> broadcast industry seems to have it's own variation, which they seem to
> want to keep complex, proprietary so that people can't mess with it. Then
> there seem to be more open standards.
> 
> I'm looking to achieve the same thing no matter which protocols I end up
> using, streaming the A/V over the network and using STB's.

At this point I would suggest setting up either a combo frontend/backend, or a standalone backend and a single frontend. 
This will allow you to become more familiar with Myth and what it can do, and the answers to some of your questions will 
become obvious.

You will be able to set up frontends on any PC on your network, and can use STBs as UPnP clients as well. I'm not sure 
what type of STBs you have in mind, some of the DirectTV receivers will work as UPnP clients, as will devices such as the 
PopCorn Hour, Myka, D-Link DSM-520 and even XBox 360s. Some TV sets even have UPnP/DLNA clients built-in.

Don't get a Westinghouse TV, they just got popped for GPL violations:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/08/05/1227240/Software-Freedom-Conservancy-Wins-GPL-Case-Against-Westinghouse


Any frontend machine you want to be able to use for HD playback will need either LOTS of CPU horsepower, or a VDPAU-
capable video card, decoding HD is a non-trivial task best left to hardware unless you have a very beefy CPU on the 
frontend. The goal of a frontend is to have a (relatively) low power device to display video and control the backend. The 
Revo 1600s are popular, they have ION graphics to handle decoding, are low-power and relatively quiet.