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

[Paul Bender]

Blammo wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 2:41 PM, migmog <andrew at migmog.com> wrote:
> <snip>
>> The frontend was a net-booted VIA
>> mini-itx frontend running minimyth. Booted in about a minute, but more
>> importantly resumed from standby in under 10 seconds and consumed VERY
>> little power - ~35 watts when showing video, ~3 watts in standby -
>> which is too high but still an order of magnitude better that what
>> most people get.
> 
> Aren't there still some pretty serious horsepower challenges when
> playing back things like 1080i or H.264 with a light-end front end
> like that, or has that situation improved? (not counting VPDAU)

You are correct. Using the VIA EPIA hardware to decode and playback HDTV 
content (whether MPEG2 or MPEG4) is essentially impossible.

I maintain MiniMyth.

Over the years, I had hoped that he VIA EPIA hardware would enable the 
decoding and playback of HDTV. However, either due to VIA's inadequate 
hardware or due to VIA's inadequate support for Open Source drivers, it 
has not been possible to use the VIA EPIA hardware to play back HDTV 
video content. While there was some hope that MPEG2 HDTV would become 
possible with the better Open Source support promised by VIA, I do not 
believe that there is any hope for MPEG4 HDTV.

I continue to use a VIA EPIA SP8000E to play back MPEG2 SDTV, for which 
it works well. However, my newer systems are AMD+NVIDIA rather than VIA. 
The AMD+NVIDIA systems have no problem playing back MPEG2 HDTV. In 
addition, they make no more noise than the fanless VIA EPIA solutions. 
However, because they use cases with 120mm fans, they are larger.

While the AMD+NVIDIA systems consume more power than the VIA EPIA 
systems when running, both systems consume about the same power while in 
S3 standby. As a result, the power consumption difference is not as much 
of a concern.

Because of Intel's support for Open Source as well as their CPU 
power/watt performance, I had thought that I would move to Intel 
hardware. However, VPDAU is making me reconsider. If NVIDIA's VDPAU has 
good usability (in a way the NVIDIA's XVMC never did), they I will 
likely stay with the lower cost AMD+NVIDIA.