[mythtv-users] Cheap front end?

Tue Feb 14 14:36:20 UTC 2006

Brian Steele wrote:
>
>
> On 2/13/06, *Bryan Halter* <bhalter at armyofpenguins.com 
> <mailto: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
>     <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
>     <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
>     <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 <http://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>:
>
I thought that the Via SP13000 was not really capable of HD level VGA 
output. I do not have HD input at the moment and my only HD capable 
output would be a 21" monitor at home.

So I went searching and found this description of the CN400 chipset 
(used in the SP13000) at:

http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/c-series/cn400/
CN400
» Supports up to 8GB DDR266/333/400 SDRAM
» High Bandwidth 1GB/Sec 16-bit Ultra V-Link Host Controller supporting 
V-Map Modular Architecture
» Chromotion CE Video Display engine
» MPEG-4 Acceleration
» MPEG-2 Decoder
» Video De-blocking
» Adaptive De-Interlace
» Full HDTV support up to 1080i / 720p <--- ***************

» Integrated VIA UniChrome Pro Graphics
» Optimized Unified memory Architecture (UMA)
» 200MHz Graphics Engine Clock with separated 128-bit data paths
» 128-bit 2D and 3D Graphics engine
» Two 8-bit Video Capture ports
» Three 12-bit Digital Video ports for connection to TV out, Video 
Capture In, and external TMDS transmitter
» Support for VIA Vinyl Gold 8-channel Audio Controller & integrated VIA 
Vinyl 6-channel Audio
» Serial ATA support for up to 4 devices
» Integrated V-RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1*, and JBOD (SATA) support
» Parallel ATA133/100/66 support for up to 4 devices
» Support for up to 8 USB 2.0/USB 1.1 ports
» Support for VIA Velocity Gigabit Ethernet companion controller & 
Integrated 10/100 Fast Ethernet
» Advanced System Power Management Support

The CN700 chipset (which is not yet built into an available motherboard 
as far as I can tell, has the following extra capabilities. the most 
useful of which is DVI etc.

» Supports up to 2GB DDR2 533/400MHz or DDR400/333/266MHz SDRAM
» 533 MB/sec 8-bit V-Link Host Controller supporting V-Map Modular 
Architecture
» Chromotion CE Video Display engine
» MPEG-2 Decoder
» Video De-blocking
» Adaptive De-Interlace
» DuoView+™
» Full HDTV support up to 1080i / 720p
» Integrated VIA UniChrome Pro Graphics
» Optimized Unified memory Architecture (UMA)
» 200MHz Graphics Engine Clock with separated 128-bit data paths
» 128-bit 2D and 3D Graphics engine
» 12-bit DVI transmitter
» 24-bit Flat Panel Display Interface and Dual 12-bit Flat Panel Display 
Interface
» 12-bit interface to external TV encoder for SDTV and HDTV display
» Support for VIA Vinyl Gold 8-channel HD Audio Controller & integrated 
VIA Vinyl 6-channel HD Audio
» Serial ATA support for up to 4 devices
» Integrated V-RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1*, and JBOD (SATA) support
» Parallel ATA133/100/66 support for up to 4 devices
» Support for up to 8 USB 2.0/USB 1.1 ports
» Support for VIA Velocity Gigabit Ethernet companion controller & 
Integrated 10/100 Fast Ethernet
» Advanced System Power Management Support

Hope that helps!

Geoff

-- 
       R. Geoffrey Newbury			
     Barrister and Solicitor
 Suite 106, 150 Lakeshore Road West
    Mississauga, Ontario, L5H 3R2

  905-271-9600  Fax 905-271-1638
       newbury at mandamus.org