[mythtv-users] nvidia ion for a front end?

[Brian Wood]

On Wednesday 14 April 2010 01:01:52 pm Fred Squires wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Brad Fuller <bradallenfuller at gmail.com> 
wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 09:46, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> >> On Wednesday 14 April 2010 10:26:01 am David Durham wrote:
> >>> This looks like a cool little device that might be suitable for a
> >>> frontend:
> >>>
> >>>   http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/204754
> >>>
> >>> $179 for a barebone nvidia Ion net top sounds like a good price, but
> >>> how well does mythtv play with ion?  I think the crux of the issue is
> >>> probably whether or not vdpau would work.  Anyone have any knowledge
> >>> of this?
> >>
> >> The Revo 1600 with the ION works fine. It won't do the more advanced de-
> >> interlacers, if that's important to you.
> >>
> >> You do need to add RAM to the base unit to get enough to allocate
> >> sufficient video RAM for VDPAU. That adds about $30 to the $199 price.
> >
> > I haven't added RAM to my new unit just placed into service, yet.
> > Seeing if I need it. Seems to work fine so far.
> >
> >
> > brad
> 
> I believe that NVidia's minimum system requirements for VDPAU, ask for
> 512 MB of RAM. With 1 GB the Revo only allocates 256 MB to the video
> card, so technically it's not supported and could have problems. That
> doesn't mean it won't work, it's just not officially supported.

That's why I added another 1G to my Revo, that and the fact that somebody 
posted a sale on the proper SODIMMs for under $30 the day before my Revo 
arrived.

I've never tried the system with less than 512MB allocated for video, so I 
can't say if it would work or not.

I think I read somewhere that you would need more than 256MB for h264 
decoding, so since the HDPVR encodes h264 it seemed like a good idea.