[mythtv-users] VIA EPIA EX for mythtv front+backend (newbie)

Chris Rouch chris.rouch at gmail.com
Fri May 30 09:34:42 UTC 2008


On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 3:58 AM, Sarah Katherine Hayes
<sarah at sarahhayes.is-a-geek.net> wrote:
> My experience is with the much older C3-1.2Ghz (or 1Ghz, it really can't
> make its mind up, sometimes it's even 900Mhz) based EPIA MII-10K.  I
> have tried running it with Fedora Core, MythDora, KnoppMyth, Windows MCE
> & MediaPortal and finally, Gentoo.
>
> Never. Ever. Again.
>
> They look good, low power, low noise, everything you could possibly
> want... however until you start running it in anger you have no
> appreciation for how gutless the Cx series of processors are, an Atom is
> 3x faster than the equivalent C7... lower power to from what I hear.
>
> They aren't all that quiet, the little 40mm fans on them are cheap n'
> whine like crazy.  You can of course replace them with more up market
> versions although keep in mind that most mini-itx cases use 40mm fans so
> make sure you buy enough to do them all.
>
> If you can get it to work the hardware acceleration is MPEG2 only, this,
> depending on where in the world you are might be important, also the
> newer chipsets seem to have near zero driver support... currently, so
> you'll probably find yourself running on pure CPU grunt.
>
> They have a habit of using the cheapest capacitors on the boards they
> can get away with, IMHO they didn't build the EPIA platform to last. But
> I could level the same complaint at other, cheapo mobo producers.
>
> I did manage to once get it to output AC3 audio to my amp, but gave up
> trying to make it do so without maxing the processor and stuttering
> audio.
>
> Ohh and I managed to get the Rioch PC Card socket working... twice (MII
> has a PC CARD socket, which was going to be my WiFi)! Yay me! Again,
> gave up on that a long time ago.
>
> Personally, get the Atom, it's cheaper, more grunty, Intel chipset,
> Intel processor, should support MPEG2 hardware acceleration and hey,
> it'll do a lot more than the C7 in terms of playback.

My experience is completely different. I have an M10K running
diskless, with the whiny cpu fan replaced by a heatsink and the case
fan turned right down. To my ears it's silent. I've had Fedora 4, 6
and 8 with mythtv up to 0.20 running flawlessly on it. 0.21 crashed
after viewing recordings, so I've switched to minimyth, again without
problems. I wouldn't want to use it for HD, and couldn't use it as a
BE, but as a small, silent FE it works well.

Chris


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