[mythtv-users] Best distro for PS3

[Raymond Wagner]

Jon Bishop wrote:
> For reference, if you already have a backend setup, the upnp client on  
> the ps3 detects all your media... but not nearly as slick and  
> interface as myth, and doesn't play back anything I've transcoded.
>
> ~Jon
Personally, I think UPnP streaming from GameOS does perfectly fine for 
its intended purpose.  The only major thing its lacking is livetv, but 
then that's what the TV you have it attached to is for.

For transcoding, lossless transcodes will work just fine on the PS3.  
Also, if you re-multiplex your old transcodes to an avi, they should be 
playable as well.

The biggest issue with running mythtv directly on a PS3 is that the 
hardware is very limited.  You only have ~180MB of memory available to 
the system, and the frontend and X server both want a ton of it.  
Running a backend is pretty much out of the question.  Beyond that, you 
have no access to the video chip, so all video rendering must be done on 
the CPU, and the CPU is fairly pathetic.

Sure, it's a 3.2Ghz chip with some 200GFlops, but you can't use any of 
that power. All that code is going to be run on a dual-execute, single 
core, in-order chip.  Performance is likely to be similar to an early 
model P4.  There are a couple projects intending to get video 
acceleration using custom code written for the SPEs.  Once they have 
something functional, the PS3 as a (linux based) frontend may be 
something worth looking at.