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

jedi jedi at mishnet.org
Wed Oct 12 14:29:51 UTC 2011


On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 10:18:19AM -0400, Raymond Wagner wrote:
> On 10/12/2011 04:58, PJR wrote:
> >
> > On 12/10/11 00:33, Nick Rout wrote:
> >> On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 11:53 AM, Raymond Wagner<raymond at wagnerrp.com>  wrote:
> >>> On 10/11/2011 17:37, Richard Morton 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. With that said I have a early dualcore atom
> >>>>
> >>> We absolutely do recommend nVidia hardware, and we don't try to dissuade
> >>> people from VDPAU.  What we are recommending against is people buying
> >>> ION systems, thinking hardware decoding is the end-all solution to
> >>> everything, without knowing its potentially severe limitations.
> >> In terms of future proofing you are probably right in that the
> >> broadcasters coulepotentially change their encoding streams at any
> >> time, but wouldn't that also stuff up many STBs?
> > What are the severe limitations of ION systems? Is it only that the
> > encoding streams may change? What are the others? I'm just about to buy
> > an ION2 board and I don't want to make a mistake.

   What's the alternative? Some machine that costs $800? Another that costs
$1000? Or something else that gets big and unwieldy fast because you have to
bolt an aftermarket discrete video card onto it?

   A GPU that doesn't need the beefy CPU is still the best option to include
with whatever you buy or build (that has a more respectable CPU). 

   ...thus the "perverse solution" that someone else mentioned.

   I'd love to be able to take a i3/i5 mini-itx board and shove it into an 
ultra low profile Antec case. I just don't think it's going to do the job. 

> 
> The severe limitations are simply that you're not getting a worthwhile 
> processor.  Hardware decoding is inherently inflexible.  You have 
> whatever capability was burned into it during fabrication, and that's 
> it.  Should you ever want to do anything the decoder is not capable of, 
> you have to fall back on the CPU, but in the case of an Atom, it does 
> not have sufficient power to handle whatever you want in software.
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