[mythtv-users] Cheap front end?

[Brian Steele]

On 2/13/06, Bryan Halter <bhalter at armyofpenguins.com> wrote:
>
> R. G. Newbury wrote:
>
> >Bryan Halter wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 05:24:52PM -0500, Bryan Halter wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I've been looking at those too.  From what I've seen I'd go with a
> >>>>fanless SP which comes with built in MPEG4 decoding in addition to
> >>>>MPEG2.  There is Unichrome project support for both decoders last I
> >>>>heard.  This becomes important if you want to display HD content.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>Source and price on those?
> >>>-- j
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>You can get the CL board you were looking at here:
> >>
> >> http://www.iboxpc.com/shopping/product.php?productid=9&cat=10&page=1
> >>
> >>for about $160 and you can get the SP here:
> >>
> >>http://www.iboxpc.com/shopping/product.php?productid=201&cat=10&page=2
> >>
> >>or the fanless variant here:
> >>
> >>http://www.iboxpc.com/shopping/product.php?productid=200&cat=10&page=2
> >>
> >>for $205.  Please note I have no affiliation that I know of with
> >>iboxpc.com they just happened to be one of the only vendors listed on
> >>the VIA Embedded website that actually sells the SP board.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >If you are looking for a board of this sort, you may want to check out
> >via's other offerings. There is a new motherboard out which has a VT1625
> >tv video out chipset instead of the VT1623 which is in the SP13000. The
> >VT1625 is noted as being able to do "HD TV".
> >
> >The VT1623 in the SP13000 does SD TV through the S-video out plug,
> >directly from the motherboard.
> >
> >I have been completely unable to find out any more information about the
> >capabilities of the board with the VT1625 but it sounds very very much
> >like something I would like.
> >Note that this motherboard really requires hardware-capable encoding
> >cards, such as the PVR500 and HD3000. The former does the encoding on
> >board. The latter of course, does not have to do so, for digital MPEG
> >streams. HD level output is another matter.
> >
> >In a nutshell, these make a fantastic quiet backend or a fantastic quite
> >frontend, but not for HD *** at the present time****.  The next version
> >may remove that last proviso.
> >
> >My System:  SP13000 with PVR500, pcHD3000 in Silverstone LC11M case with
> >Via's PCI riser and a flexible PCI extension cable, 512M RAM, 120G SATA
> >hard drive, DVD+RW reader-writer driven from cable tv feed.  About 28
> >unencrypted digital channels from Rogers Cable, Toronto, and 70 analog
> >channels available to the PVR500. (Supposedly about 12 HD channels
> >available around here OTA...but I have no antenna YET.)
> >
> >
> >
> THANK YOU...I'd asked about highdef and the SP before and not gotten
> anything really definitive
>
>
>
I was under the impression that the EPIA SP would work fine for HDTV if your
TV accepts a VGA or RGBHV input, but wouldn't work if your TV has DVI, HDMI,
or component inputs (at least not without a VGA->Component converter).   I'm
planning to get one of these to use as a HDTV frontend.  If you want the
fanless version, you can also get it
here<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-SP8000E>
:
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