[mythtv-users] Lowest power HD frontend?

[Joseph Fry]

> > On 03/06/2013, at 8:00 PM, mythtv-users-request at mythtv.org wrote:
> >
> > >>> I guess I am a bit disappointed we don't have <<10 watt machines
> > >>> today that can do all this easily.  The first ION stuff came out 4
> > >>> years ago and Moore's law should have solved this by now. :)
>
> It is a problem using Intel CPUs and PC video boards.  Most current
> phones can do 1080p decode now and they can do it for several hours on a
> battery with only a couple of Watt/Hours of energy; that is for control,
> decode, display + backlight, audio and the whole ball of wax.  In other
> words, a complete HD viewer can consume around a watt with shipping 2013
> level tech.
>
> Yet no 'PC' style machine, no matter the price, silent or loud, can
> manage to run a Myth frontend without consuming several watts just for
> the compute portion, no display, audio, etc.  Forget playing video, you
> would be hard pressed to get an Intel solution to idle at 1W, even
> suspended power drain is often more than 1W.  Heck, S5 powered down byt
> watching the network or keyboard for events usually draws more than 1W.
> I doubt you could build a PC that doesn't waste a watt in the power
> supply alone.
>
> The answer is to get a good stable Linux port with fully accelerated
> video onto one of the little ARM boxes that normally ship with Android
> and then get Mythfrontend running on that.  If Mythfrontend ever gets so
> big that it can't run well on a quadcore and 2GB ram things have totally
> went off the rails.  :)
>
> If using a hardware encoder/tuner (a HD Homerun, or comparable) I can't
> see why one of the little ARM boxes with SATA couldn't host a combined
> FE/BE system complete with MythWeb.  Transcoding might not be too
> practical and even commercial detection might be a problem.  Would be an
> interesting experiment though.
>
> TVs are getting enough grunt in them that we might want to just put the
> frontend there.  Of course all the new sets with lots of CPU also lock
> the bootloader because the reason for the beefy CPU is to load it up
> with players for as many subscription streaming services that the
> manufacturer can sign deals with.  Bleh.


I wonder if any of these would fit the bill:
http://dx.com/c/consumer-electronics-199/hd-media-players-103/android-hd-players-191.
 I know Ubuntu will install on some android phones/devices... though I'm
not sure how it would work on these.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20130605/a29e4f7b/attachment.html>