[mythtv-users] Intel Atom...Myth worthy?

Scott D. Davilla davilla at 4pi.com
Tue May 20 15:45:35 UTC 2008


>Matt Emmott wrote:
>>
>>
>>  On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 6:25 PM, Marc Randolph <mrand at pobox.com
>>  <mailto:mrand at pobox.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>      > Seems like a hacked $199 AppleTV is still the sweet spot for an
>>      HD FE at the
>>      > moment, IMHO.
>>
>>      But it's limited to MPEG-2, isn't it?
>>
>>
>>  In its default form, yes, but search for posts by Scott D. Davilla -
>>  It's apparently gotten extremely easy to load Ubuntu onto an AppleTV
>>  using the ATV Bootloader. I haven't tried it yet so YMMV but it sounds
>>  like the box has some amazing capabilities for something so low-cost.
>It's worth remembering that the box was designed to have the CPU and GPU
>working in concert; something Linux's Nvidia drivers don't do (*shakes
>tiny fist at Nvidia*), so some of it's capabilities in OS X might not
>erm... work very well in Linux... YMMV and other such disclaimers;
>saying that I *want* an ATV, just to test with you understand :)
>
>I think it can do MPEG2 HD easily though, dunno about h264 (and defo not
>PAFF'd stuff).  Still want one though :)

MPlayer is my test app.

720p mpeg2 and mpeg4/h.264 seems fine. High bit-rate mpeg4/h.264 need 
the skiploopfilter with ffmpeg. Pure CPU decode in this mode with Xv 
handling scaling.

1080i mpeg2 is fine with XvMC. 1080p mpeg4/h.264 no way unless 
someone does a GPU decoder for h.264 for Linux (none exists yet).

It actually handles more content under Linux than OSX. A common myth 
is that OSX on the AppleTV uses the GPU for h.264 decode assist and 
it does not (it could), just GL and not quartz accelerated GL. If it 
had GPU decode assist, then it easily could do 1080p h.264 
decode/display.

Scott





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