[mythtv-users] Reference fanless frontend, frontend, backend, fe/be

[Andre]

On 13 Jan 2011, at 21:40, Richard Morton wrote:

> I had an online discussion with someone (not on this list) that was
> being very patronising and abusive while telling me that hi is
> transcoding a bluray rip to 2gb (from 25gb) and it is completely
> lossless.

Does he work for Adobe? ;-) they seem to think that sort of thing is possible!


> 
> However; this does highlight a point jedi's point. both are 1080p
> encodes of a movie, both are in H264 and yet not both will playback on
> the same hardware, the more data the more processing required.

Never mind the myriad combinations of encoding tools and schemes available even within a fixed profile. I could easily generate a perfectly valid H264 encode at common rates that wouldn't playback on any current cpu in software and vdpau would barf on too. I had something much like that recently for a customer who wanted 1080p at 4Mb/s but they couldn't find anything fast enough to play the resulting files, looked ok for 4Mb/s but certainly nothing near even bad bluray quality.

Looking at the BBC HD threads I think the BBC just recently did the same!


> 
> Throw into the mix a different codec (and lack of hardware decoding)
> and absolutely (unfortunately) one box may play one
> 720i/720p/1080i/1080p file but not another.
> 
> However... in response to the original poster; I have just seen my
> next frontend:
> 
> designed to be fanless; ION2 system with DC power input (i.e. no
> traditional PSU required, just a laptop type power-brick).
> 
> http://www.zotac.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=546:zotac-updates-ion-itx-platforms&catid=1&Itemid=268&lang=un

Ah, excellent, might have to get one of these instead of a new graphics card, thanks.

Andre