[mythtv-users] Quiet PC / Frontend recomendation

[Ian]

On Sun, 13 May 2012, Jason McLeod wrote:

> I just bought a Zotac Z-Box HD-41, and it is fantastic. The latest 
> NVIDEA drivers work on it, and VDPAU does a great job decoding videos. 
> I stream my HD antenna directly to it without any problems at all.

I'll second this opinion. A few years ago I was looking to replace a very 
aging Mac Mini, which I was using as a front-end because, well, I had it 
lying around. Before that I had a machine I built, which is where most my 
computers come from, so I was looking to build another one for MythTV.

But since I wanted a small and silent machine, I just couldn't match the 
price of a ready-made machine. I got an Acer Aspire Revo... 
something-or-other. It's tiny and it was cheap. It has an Atom processor 
and some kind of nvidia HDMI output. I too had it booting off the network 
for a year or so, but recently put a cheapo 8gb SSD drive in it so now it 
goes from power-on to MythTV in seconds. Again, it's several years old, 
cost about USD$300 and has absolutely no problem streaming 1080p video off 
the back-end server downstairs. I'd definitely look into those options.

I'd LOVE to try a Raspberry PI for a front-end, though.

-Ian

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