[mythtv-users] Easy front-end?

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Fri Jul 2 13:59:48 UTC 2010


On Friday, July 02, 2010 07:47:37 am jedi wrote:

>     There's a definite advantage to having your frontend separate. You can
> get away with a much older backend than frontend. I've upgraded my own FEs
> to 10.04 because of this. I found the config for the latest release was
> expecting newer versions of vdpau then I could get from the package
> manager.
> 
>     In general, I would hesitate to mess with a master backend and go for
> the option of separating the frontend onto a separate ION box
> 
> > Any thoughts?

The Revo 1600 is the best bang for the buck, IMHO, if you are buying new hardware for a frontend.

Downside is it can't do the most intensve de-interlacers, or hardware decode of xvid, though it does produce decent 
pictures with lesser deinterlacers, and can handle software decode of most xvid material. It has no SPDIF output, but it 
does of course have HDMI.

The included HDD is a 2.5" unit, so its performance isn't stellar, but it does have an e-SATA port, and of course it can 
be netbooted easily. You could replace the HDD with a SSD, but I really don't see that as essential, the drive is only 
being used for the OS and F/E software, the database ad video storage are handled by the backend.

On the  plus side it's small, low-power, reasonably quiet and doesn't look all that bad. At $200 it's reasonably 
affordable. Enough people are using it that help is easy to obtain here.



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list