[mythtv-users] Power Saving Frontend Ideas

[Brian Wood]

On Apr 14, 2008, at 9:16 AM, David Watkins wrote:
>> You might also look at the "slugs", aka: Linksys NSLU2. 5 or 6 watts
>> and you can run a full Linux Distro:
>
> I have 3 slugs and think they're pretty cool.  I presume you're *not*
> suggesting them as an option for a low power frontend though (see
> thread title)?

Certainly not as a frontend, the subject had sort of moved to low- 
power firewalls, and how to save power in general.

There are devices that will allow video out of a slug, but not at even  
SD speeds. You can also run a VNC server, but again you couldn't get  
even SD video out of it.

You might be able to use a slug to play audio from a Myth server  
though, there are several USB audio devices that work well.


> I have read of someone getting the backend running on one, but mostly
> I think just to prove that they could.

The slug's I/O performance is pretty dismal, and considering you'd  
have to use a USB capture device, thus suffering the slow I/O for both  
in and out, I wouldn't think it would make a very good backend.

But I agree, they are very nice little devices. They make decent mail  
servers, web servers, routers, firewalls and a lot else. A lot of  
folks are successfully running them as Asterisk servers.

Back to the literal subject - An MVP is probably the lowest power  
frontend available, though it can't handle HD.

beww