[mythtv-users] koolu frontend

[Jon Larson]

Brian Wood wrote:
> James Orr wrote:
>   
>> I'm thinking about separating my backend from my frontend.  They are
>> currently combined, but it gets a little noisy sometimes.
>>
>> I found this as a possible frontend ... http://www.koolu.com/
>> <http://www.koolu.com/>
>>
>> I searched the list and was quite surprised not to get any hits as it
>> even has a mythtv frontend running in the product demo video.
>>
>> Obviously this box won't have the horse-power for playing back HD, but
>> that is not a concern for me at the moment, or indeed for the forseeable
>> future.
>>
>> Is anybody using one of these?  The one downside I see is that I use
>> MythDVD as my main DVD player, and this obviously does not have a DVD
>> player in it.  I could use an external USB DVD player, does anybody know
>> how well those work under Linux?
>>     
>
> Hmmm... A 500Mhz. CPU is right on the edge of being able to decode
> DVD-quality MPEG2 without any hardware assistance, and that assumes
> highly-optimized software.
>
> Obviously you couldn't use a PCI capture device, but USB or even a HDHR
> might be a possibility.
>
> I'm not familiar with the LX800 graphics, but I'd guess it doesn't offer
> any help with MPEG playback.
>
> It might work, for SD, then again it might not.
>
> No way to tell except for some brave (or well-financed) soul to try it out.
>
>   
They actually have a demonstration video in which the unit is running 
Mythfrontend in Ubuntu--it seems to do so quite well with SD, but I 
think their listings are a little off (never seen NASCAR like that): 
http://www.koolu.com/content/view/28/211/

The price is quite good considering it's a 'finished' product. Would 
anybody care to comment on how this might compare to a similar 
EPIA-based machine in terms of processing power, etc?

Jon


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