The real power of the Mini-ITX boards comes from the fact that they are quiet, small, and low power. If recording could be stripped out to a separate machine stored in a closet then you'll have a much quieter home theater experience. Personnaly, one reason I don't just go with a Tivo is that it can only record one channel at a time. With Freevo coming along as nicely as it is, my plan is to have a powerful file server capable of recording from as many channels as I have tuner cards. I can't imagine having such a machine in my living room.
~Rob -----Original Message----- From: Andreas Leitner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 1:21 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Freevo-users] Anybody using a Shuttle PC with freevo? Hi Jim, On Wed, 2003-02-26 at 19:54, Jim Lavin wrote: > I actually tried the earlier Shuttle FV24 systems. You're right they do have > more power than the VIA EPIA boards. Biggest problem I had was with getting > everything in the little box. Especially the WINTV boards. They seem to be a > little wider than your average PCI card making it a tight fit. Once you get > the hard drive, cd-rom, cards and floppy in place you might find you have a > pretty compact little unit. I think i can cope without fdd (maybe even without hdd - i have a file server, but i am not sure how to boot then - flash-ide is an idea) > I'm currently working on a VIA EPIA MX board in a case I found through > www.mini-itx.com and have found the type of silent PC you're talking about. > Be careful when you are picking cases some of them have low-profile PCI > slots that make it hard to fit a TV card in to. I ended up going with a ATI > TV/Wonder VE since had a small enough profile to fit in the case I'm using. > The VIA motherboard has a 933 Mhz, support for 133Mhz SDRAM, SVideo and RCA > Composite out which makes it perfect for just this type of project. The > newer boards will have a 1Ghz processor on them and uses the faster memory. Did you run some benchmarks on the system? I know 933 Mhz CPU f and 133Mhz fsb f sound like plenty, but IIRC you cannot just put in an Intel or AMD CPU but need to use an Eden or C3 processor. And all I heard from then was they perform badly on integer and floating point operations - which I think have a major influence on video de and enconding. I am no expert, but from what I heard even the brand new faster processor (the 1GHz one) might not be up to the task of compressing TV to mpeg realtime. I would be _more_ than happy to stand corrected though. So if you can _please_ prove me wrong (; > If you can't find the right looking case look at the projects page at > www.mini-itx.com to see what some folks have done. Gives a whole new meaning > to hiding a computer. nice link, thanks! regards, Andreas ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Scholarships for Techies! Can't afford IT training? All 2003 ictp students receive scholarships. Get hands-on training in Microsoft, Cisco, Sun, Linux/UNIX, and more. www.ictp.com/training/sourceforge.asp _______________________________________________ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf _______________________________________________ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
