[mythtv-users] Looking for reliable, inexpensive HD front end only box?

[Andrew Gallatin]

Phill Wiggin [alamar at gmail.com] wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Johnny <jarpublic at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > > There has been quite a bit of discussion of SD boxes, recently.
> > >
> > > But I'm thinking about building a HD box, and I was wondering
> > > about what folks are using for HD front ends these days.
> >
> > The ION systems are popular recently. There has been several lengthy
> > threads on them on the list recently. The Zotac ION boards are
> > particularly popular at around $200 they can use VDPAU to playback HD
> > content smoothly. They are low power and can be fanless with the right
> > versions. By most accounts it is the ideal mythtv frontend.
> 
> 
> FWIW, My Zotac ION (dual-core version) plays back ATSC MPEG2 HD smoothly
> without enabling VDPAU.  Judging by the relatively small amount of CPU usage
> it takes, I'd assume the single-core version would play smoothly as well.

I just built a box with the same (dual core) board, and I'm finding
that ATSC MPEG2 1080i HD playback is not as smooth as I'm used to with
a hardware (Sigma EM8620L) based SageTV HD100 extender. There are
occasional small skips and jerks where the Sigma box (playing the
exact same MythTV 1080i recording as a "video" in SageTV) is smooth as
silk.

Can you tell me what playback profile you use?  What drivers?  Do you
enable or disable HTT?  I'm using the avenard VDPAU build, Nvidia 190
drivers, and the avenard suggested profile:

<      W: 1920 H: 720, decoder: VDPAU, renderer: VDPAU, Deinterlacer: Advanced 2X
>=    W: 0 H: 720, decoder: VDPAU, renderer: VDPAU, Deinterlacer: Temporal 2X

This is under Ubuntu 9.04 (x86) with Hyper Threading enabled, feeding
a 1920x1200 monitor via VGA (will eventually move to 1920x1080 LCD TV
via HDMI).

Thanks,

Drew