[mythtv-users] Via Epia sp and hdtv

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Sat Feb 4 17:41:53 UTC 2006


On Fri, February 3, 2006 21:39, Shane said:

>>On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 12:37:00PM -0700, James Dastrup wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I don't have experience with the Via Epia, although I haven't heard
>>>anything _good_ about them with HDTV playback. Any particular reason
>>>you want it fanless? If noise is your concern, you can get a
>>>nearly-quiet machine going with a diskless front-end, upgraded CPU
>>>fan with voltage reducer, and a quiet power supply. I have a P4 3.0
>>>frontend that you almost have to put your ear on the case before you
>>>even know it's on.
>>>      
>>>
>>Thanks for the info.  I haven't comitted to the Epia at
>>this point but yeah it's for the silence.  There are cases
>>which can fit the sp 1.3ghz board with a heatpipe and
>>external power supply.  I planned on going diskless and pxe
>>booting the thing from the big server in the other room.
>>That and these mini-itx case dimensions will fit our stereo
>>cabinet.
>>
The reason James has not heard anything good about  an Epia MB for HD, 
is that the on-board video basically will not do HD output to TV.
The SP13000 handles PVR500 analog and HD3000 digital signals at SD level 
signals quite well, and will fill/stretch to 1280/1024 to a monitor but 
not to TV.
They are quiet however and have everything else you will need including 
6 channel sound.

The SP13000 has a VT1623 TV video encoder.
A newly Via-announced but still not really available nano-itx board 
carries a VT1625 TV video encoder chip which is supposed to do HD level 
TV out.
But details are impossible to discover....but that's what I will be 
looking at, very closely.

I'm using an HD3000 card for digital channels off cable. There are 
however a number of OTA HD channels available if I stick up an antenna 
and I may go that route soon.

Geoff





More information about the mythtv-users mailing list