On Tue, 2005-08-02 at 10:47, Neale Swinnerton wrote:
So which epia boards are you using as front ends? I looked at several
on the mini-itx.com site and they do look interesting. I assume you are
using the video output from the epia board and do not have any encoder
cards installed in such a front end. What speed CPU is needed to handle
decode of mpeg2?
I've got a Epia MII 12000 and a fanless Epia ME6000. Video out is via the
built in driver. Both can play back mythtv recordings easily, 'cos the
MPEG2 decoding is handled in hardware, using the built in mythv xvmc-vld
support. (the work on this lately has made this pretty solid for me). I
play MPEG4 avi's on both machines. The ME6000 can 'just' (>90%cpu) cope
with most MPEG4's
Ah! So those boards have on board mpeg2 decoding that works with stuff
recorded using a PVR-350 or PVR-250. I'm not really interested in using
this for avi's, just for the TV recordings.
In the UK we don't have any HD content broadcast yet, so I haven't got
into that, you might want to investigate different boards if you want to
decode HD in hardware, there has been discussion on this list about this
sort of stuff.
Currently not interested in HD stuff either. :)
Are you using the atrpms packages on the front end systems or some other
distribution?
I tend to build from SVN head when I see something interesting in the
Changes. Both my frontend machines are diskless, Knoppmyth is your friend
for that sort of stuff, although I use gentoo.
I will take a look at knoppmyth. Currently running FC3 with mythtv from
atrpms. I believe I am one version behind on mythtv at the moment. Why
mess with something that is working just fine. :)
While I was hoping to get a third capture card in the mix finding a good
relatively cheap frontend only system is a goal.
I found that with 3 cards I'm pushed to be able to watch all the stuff I
record. I can rapidly fill my disks!!
After the initial flood of recordings things have settled down to a
reasonable rate of recordings. Other than the huge block of Twilight
Zone's during the marathon they ran a few weeks ago it is fairly easy to
keep up with the box now. Of course having 1 TB to store them on makes
it easier to keep things until you watch them.
I found that two encoder cards resolve most conflicts. A third should
take care of the few remaining conflicts that occur from time to time.
The idea of using a diskless system for the front ends is appealing. Is
knoppmyth the best option for this? Or would setting up a bootp server
be the way to go?
Some people also use mini-ITX boards with a 1GB CF card as the HD in
front ends. You can build Linux & Myth from scratch and get it to
fit, or so I hear. Check gossamer for discussions on this option. No
moving parts! It sounds really nice to me. (Pun Intended) This is how
I plan to build my dedicated FEs.
