[mythtv-users] Secrets for low powered front ends ?

[Mark Kendall]

On 11 October 2011 22:52, Nick Rout <nick.rout at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Richard Morton
> <richard.e.morton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Don't forget that the people that know (the devs) don't recommend
>> ion/nvidia/vdpau systems because they are very codec/encoding dependant.
>
> And they are right, however:
>
> (1) vdpau seems to cope with the commonest current broadcast
> techniques (mpeg2 and h.264); and
>
> (2) if you are ripping your own blurays and dvds then it is easy
> enough to put them in a codec that is supported; and
>
> (3) if you are downloading videos then to the extent that they are
> copyrighted, you are probably not welcome to discuss your practices
> here, but again it is easy enough to find in the right codecs.
>
> So I think the problem for TV and videos is illusory. BUT flash
> remains a problem.

Exactly.

Much of the current MythTV code was written and tested on a first
generation ion box (dual core) and I still use that box for my main
frontend. I don't have a clip or sample in my collection of 'oddities'
that it cannot play. I'm sure someone could dig out a 1080p avi (which
would fall back to software decoding and be unwatchable) or a badly
encoded H.264 - but from a practical perspective, it handles
everything.

I'd recommend something with a little more CPU grunt (to better handle
CPU intensive captions and interactive tv) - but the GPU side is fine.

regards
Mark