[mythtv-users] Very Low Cost Frontend
Jim Abernathy
jfabernathy at gmail.com
Fri Dec 27 01:10:21 UTC 2019
On 12/26/19 4:57 PM, Ken Mandelberg wrote:
> My 10 year old Macmini/HDHR running Ubuntu Myth front/backend is
> having issues. I'm looking for a very low cost replacement. I build
> the trunk frequently, and want the standard frontend not Kodi. The Mac
> has an old Nvida GPU which worked well for years, and I really want
> something with a GPU that Myth supports.
>
> From what I read there is no GPU support on the PI4, which other than
> would be a nice price point.
>
> I know a NUC would work, but they start getting pricey once
> configured, and its not clear to me what the cheapest one without
> media format limitations is. I know there are other boxes in similar
> form factor, but don't know if there is a better value than a NUC.
>
> Storage is not an issue, I already use a large USB disk for both root
> and the media on the mini.
>
> It seems like even cheap phone/tablet SOCs have better GPUs than the
> old Nvidia.
>
>
I've done a lot of testing recently. The RPi4 is an excellent backend
with HDHR Quatro as a networked tuner. That gives you 4 tuners and the
CPU horsepower to handle the recording using a USB3 SATA SSD or even
hard drive.
The good news is the RPi4 can also handle 4 recordings and do the
mythtv-frontend at the same time. For me that's 4 OTA mpeg2 programs
while displaying a previously recorded program. The quality is quite
good for the video playback.
However a separate FE is slightly better. I've tested a RP3B+ running
LibreELEC (KODI) with the kodi-pvr-mythtv addon. I've also tested the
FireTV Stick 4K running the Mythtv-frontend and the Mythtv-leanfront.
Both are excellent.
So for cheapest do a Combo RPi4 FE/BE with a 1TB USB3 SATA SSD using an
adapter. For best leave the RPi4 as a backend only and use the FireTV
stick 4K as the frontend.
That's the cheapest I've found. Since storage is the same for any
solution, the comes down to $25 for the FireTV stick 4K and $100 for a
RPi4 4GB DRAM kit.
I'm parallel testing both my Core i7 Sandybridge backend with hard
drives again the RPi4 backend. Using the FireTV stick 4K and a Shield TV
frontend on both. No difference in quality of recordings or playback.
Jim A
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