[mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

[Carl-Magnus Björkell]

Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 12:20 PM, John Drescher <drescherjm at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> First, thanks to everyone to responded to my first e-mail:
>>> http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2008-November/238792.html
>>>
>>> So given people's comments in there, I'm exploring building a MythTV box myself.
>>>
>>> The first thing I'd like a MythTV box (that I would build) to be, is
>>> to be quiet.  Completely silent if possible.
>>>
>> This is not very difficult. But you have to first give some details on
>> your requirements. What  are you going to record and from? I mean HD
>> will require a faster system.
> 
> I'm recording from Cable.  (So I am not recording in HD.)
> 
> 
> But... if it matters (and I don't know if it matters)... I want to be
> able to play HD.
> 
> --
> Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.
> http://changelog.ca/
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> 

Recording is the easy part. You could probably record HD using an old P3
  or something like that (just pulling that out of my ass, but still,
not much processing power is required to record). As long as you have
the HD space, you're set.

Playback on the other hand requires quite alot of your frontend CPU.
Especially if you want to do h264 encoded full-hd you'll need a dualcore
3ghz or above.

However, if you've followed the mailing lists you've seen that nVidia
recently released drivers that allow GPU assisted decoding of h264,
which would help alot in creating a quiet HD-able system. I haven't
tested the new beta drivers myself, but according to the benchmarks at
Phoronix
(http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_vdpau&num=1)
it should be really _really_ effective. You'd probably want to look into
that some more :)


-Calle