[mythtv-users] Combined Atom FE/BE /w GT220 ?

[Tyler T]

>> I've moved to Australia. So DVB-T 1080i HD MPEG2 and DVB-T 576i SD
>> MPEG2 is the order of the day. No Comm flagging. No transcoding.
>> Nothing "high power". Just IO to disk and upscale/de-int to 1080p
>> output.
>
> If you wanted to save even more power, you could use a SheevaPlug with a USB
> DVB tuner (Probably what you're using already, though you don't say) and an
> external hard-drive (Or a NAS) as the Backend. Then you can turn off your
> Frontend, and gain much-needed WAF (And much needed power savings).

I will second this recommendation (as I am currently using a Sheeva
for my BE and loving it) with a caveat: while myself and least one
other I know of are using Sheeva backends with success, we are using
SiliconDust HD HomeRun tuners. I don't think a lot of testing on Plug
computers with USB tuners has been done, so if anyone has done it and
is reading this, please post!

> As the Sheevaplug uses 3 watts, and you won't be doing any heavy lifting
> (Commflagging/Transcoding), this will be a perfect backend, and so small the
> SO will probably miss it.

I think Sheeva is more like 4 watts idle and 11w full-bore, but, yeah.
:) I use a 2.5" drive for further power/noise savings over 3.5".

As it happens, I have been working on a "PlugMyth" type distro that
can be dumped to a SD card or USB stick or HDD and booted on a Plug
(Sheeva/Guru/Ionics/Pogo/Tonido/DockStar/etc) so one can get a
jumpstart without spending time installing an OS and compiling Myth.
If anyone is interested, contact me or watch this list for an
announcement "soon".

> If power savings is what you are after, having your system shut down when idle will cut the power of any hardware.

True, but I also use my Plug for NTP, NAS, DNS/DHCP, and other things
so it's not really "dedicated" to being a BE thus having an
on-all-the-time general-purpose server is convenient for things other
than Myth. That, and I've never had good luck with ACPI on Linux. ;)

> The 45w sempron w/cpu freq scaling probably actually weighs in right
> about the same power-usage wise as the atom

I will second this as well. I put a Sempron in the wife's desktop PC
and the thing runs so cool the temperature-controlled CPU fan will
actually stop when the thing is idle (granted I do have a big heatsink
on it). Plus, Semprons and AM3 mobos are both dirt cheap and can
(generally) be purchased locally. I bet it beats the pants off an Atom
(possibly even a dual-core Atom?) performance-wise, too. IMHO, Sempron
== Atom killer for certain Myth/HTPC configurations.