[mythtv-users] Raspberry Pi now ships with 512MB RAM

[Michael T. Dean]

On 10/16/2012 05:53 AM, Simon Hobson wrote:
> tortise wrote:
>> If the R'Pi does H264 well, how hard would it be to convert content 
>> such as mpeg2 et al to H264 on the backends, and serve it all freshly 
>> converted up to run on R'Pi frontends? Especially now with the mega 
>> Intel CPU processing power now available?
>
> If you are going to do that, why bother with a low power frontend 
> (that's not powered up most of the time) as you'll be putting in a 
> powerful backend that will need to be on all the time ? My backend 
> can't do real-time transcoding anyway - when doing an H264 transcode 
> for iPad it takes about 5-6 hours per hour of program for UK Freeview 
> (DVB-T) SD recordings. But then it only takes 50W total, and 
> effectively only cost me £140* plus the tuners (£20 or less off eBay) 
> and drives (some of which I already had).
>
> HP Microserver, £240 with £100 cashback offer that seems to never 
> expire !
> http://www.ebuyer.com/281915-hp-proliant-turion-ii-n40l-microserver-100-cashback-658553-421 
>
> I see they are now £250 but still with £100 cashback. Mine is the 
> earlier N36L version.

+1 ...  You can't consider your frontend low-power when it relies on an 
extremely-power-hungry backend running all the time.  Just choose an 
appropriate "able-to-idle-at-low-power-usage" system for your 
frontends/backends and you'll be better off than having a 
low-power-usage frontend and a high-power-usage backend.  And, if you 
really want true power efficiency/savings, shut down the systems when 
not in use.  
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/448321#448321

Mike