[mythtv-users] Lowest power HD frontend?

[Dave Badia]

I have a Habey EPC-6568, I believe this meets all of the OP requirements
since:
- SFF
- fanless
- decodes 1080i with Advanced detinterlacing (on board nvidia chipset)
- Low power: 20w idle, 26w during video playback as measured from the
wall.  Cron to power off at night/restart in the am
- Low cost (~$250US with memory as I recall.  I netboot so no hard drive)
- Prebuilt (just add memory)

An added bonus is that it's built to run digital billboards so it's
durable.  I've had it out on my porch for 2 years in a cabinet with a small
ventilation hole and no fan.  I live in an area with very high humidity and
it routinely reaches 100F in the summer.

Its the best solution I could find a few years back, and from reading this
thread, still may be until new technology arrives.  The particular model I
bought is discontinued but I'm sure there's a new one now.

Dave





On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 1:27 AM, John Morris <jmorris at beau.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 2013-06-06 at 00:48 +0000, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
> > Some thoughts:
> >
> > - Few of these ARM devices can do hardware temporial/spatial
> >   de-interlacing.  Interlaced content is common on many
> >   locations.  None of the ARM devices with their limited
> >   capability decoders (that I am aware of) can do High
> >   Def content temporal/spatial de-interlacing in software.
> >   That may be fine on a 4" screen, where either low
> >   resolution bob/weave can be acceptable (or even throwing
> >   away every other frame), but is may not be acceptable on
> >   that 65" OLED (your tolerance to low quality will vary)
> >
> > - Some of the hardware decoders have no linux driver
> >   support.
>
> Most have no proper Linux support.  Initial attempts at open source
> drivers for a couple but nothing production ready yet.  I have read of
> some people getting the binary blobs distributed with Android going on
> some, but haven't heard about accelerated video decode, only EGL.  After
> all, modern desktops are pretty much useless without 3D so that seems to
> be the initial thrust of development.  Had hoped that at least one
> vendor would have realized there was enough of a market from us Linux
> folk they would have at least released an Nvidia style binary blob that
> fully supported their device under X.  Alas.
>
> But I suspect there ARE chips that can do quality video playback.  Too
> many consumer video products are using many of the same SoC elements,
> including BluRay players.  The cut down ultra low power parts that go to
> phones might not produce perfect playback on a large TV but I was
> talking about units marketed as settop boxes.  I'd expect them to have
> pretty good hardware video since software decode, deinterlace, etc. is
> pretty much out of the question on an ARM.
>
> > - Mythfrontend has a lot of capabilities that simply
> >   require a lot of processing power.  That means
> >   large(r), and needing more resources.  While it
> >   certainly could be slimmed down, one would first
> >   have to agree on what one should throw out.
> >   That might be an interesting conversation to
> >   start.  What features should a frontend have?
> >   Clearly (from other posts) some find the XBMC
> >   feature set adequate.  While some others
> >   want more and more features added to the
> >   frontend.  Can the community agree on what
> >   features you want to deprecate, or what content
> >   types you are willing to abandon.
>
> Not really.  Unless you are talking about non-TV plugins like MythGame,
> the basic frontend shouldn't consume much in the way of resources.  Even
> the browser wouldn't be a problem.  The use case these machines are sold
> for includes running a browser after all... in an environment mostly
> written in Java; Qt is slim compared to that sort of resource waste.
> Modern ARM parts are more than fast enough for drawing a UI.  And would
> make running a FE without moving parts very achievable without being
> expensive.
>
> But like I mentioned earlier, transcoding and commercial detection would
> be an issue on a combined FE/BE.  It could probably manage commercial
> detection, it would just take longer.  Transcoding might need hardware
> assistance, and it certainly would if you wanted to stream via http.
>
> All we need is somebody to sell hardware that a mainstream distro can
> run on and actually use the full hardware feature set.  And that seems
> to be a showstopper for now.
>
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>
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