[mythtv-users] Broadcom CrystalHD??

Jarod Wilson jarod at wilsonet.com
Wed Jan 6 20:43:00 UTC 2010


On Jan 6, 2010, at 3:36 PM, Matt Emmott wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 10:51 AM, Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On Jan 5, 2010, at 6:08 PM, Matt Emmott wrote:
>> 
>>> What's the support like with 3D games and desktop candy like Aero / Beryl / Aqua etc? I'm 95% concerned with the HTPC potential and I know that this device is in its infancy but I'm wondering what the day-to-day experience is like.
>> 
>> I swear I replied to this earlier, but I don't see it, so trying once more...
>> 
>> The Crystal HD is a video decoder card. Not a video card. You send it encoded video bitstreams, it decodes them, and puts raw frames of video in a buffer. Your application pulls from that buffer, and displays them on your video card. There is no interaction with the Crystal HD at all for 3D or any other desktop stuff, that all goes through your video card.
>> 
> 
> You did reply, it's in this thread somewhere.

Yeah, figured it out now. Quirk of using gmail -- it doesn't add my own list message to my inbox, it gets discarded as a dupe of the message I sent. Annoying, but I'll deal...

> Ok, so now I'm confused. From reading some of the other posts and the
> links provided, I was under the impression that the Mac Minis and
> iMacs had their GPUs in a mini-PCI slot, and this little device would
> replace that GPU. I guess I'm misunderstanding this? If I'm correct in
> being incorrect, then how would this device work on these Macs and
> other boxes? Do they have an unused Mini-PCI slot? or does it plug
> into the slot occupied by, say, the wireless card?

These systems have onboard GPUs, built into their system boards, they aren't on a mini pci-e card. The Crystal HD is a mini pci-e card, which in the case of the Mac Mini and AppleTV, does indeed have to supplant the existing wireless card. So if your system has no wired network connection, you'll have to get an external usb one, hook up to a wired network, or not use this thing (I have wired connections myself).

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com





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