> I'm at an awkward stage with Myth. > > My back end is pretty much complete and works a treat. I bought the > slowest second-hand P4 machine that the local second-hand computer > shop (<http://www.computer-resale.co.uk/> - it's a great place) could > sell me, installed Gentoo, two Hauppauge Nova-T cards and Myth and > everything worked pretty easily. Kudos to the developers, the Gentoo > ebuild maintainers and the many HOWTO authors. It records stuff > reliably and dishes out the video to either a front end running on > the same machine (in the study) or to my PowerBook plugged in via > 100-baseT. It doesn't work too well wirelessly, but that's no > surprise. > > So, now the difficult bit. The back end will be hidden away (in the > attic, probably). It is time to buy a front end system. I want > something quiet, above all, so was considering either a Mac mini or a > VIA EPIA system. It would be controlled only via a remote control - > I've no plans to provide it with a pointing device or to use it for > general computing. > > While most people have the idea that Macs are expensive, it seems to > me that a Mac mini actually costs less than an EPIA system with a > comparably nice looking case. However I'm not so confident that I > can turn a Mac mini into a completely remote-controllable system. > With no serial ports, I can't see how I can use it with LIRC. There > are USB-based remote control receivers for Mac use, but they come > with remote controls with only very few buttons and I don't expect > they can be used with any other remote. > > So: Has anyone successfully built a complete Mac OS X front end > system, playing Myth, DVDs, ripped CDs, ripping CDs and DVDs etc, all > controlled from the remote. Or.... should I go for the EPIA? Or... > have I overlooked any other machine? > > Finally how quiet is the Mac Mini? It has a fan, which I couldn't > hear in the shop, but then shops are noisy. EPIA 8000s are truly > silent. > > Andrew > --
Questions to ask yourself are what is the relevant fit to a multimedia application - apart from noise. I'm running an Epia SP13000 and the fans (CPU & PSU) can be heard when the sound is muted - but I haven't gone for a quiet case with heat pipes & passive cooling. Its diskless (the backend has the disk storage) so no disk noise. What I do have is: 6 channel sound output s/pdif audio output composite video out (PAL & NTSC) s-video out USB I/O firewire I/O 100M ethernet hardware mpeg2 decoder hardware mpeg4 decoder an internal serial port for a homemade LIRC IR detector an internal parallel port for a homemade lcdproc LCD display I reckon I spent my money wisely :-)) eg. xine DVD player - 5% cpu load -- Robin Gilks _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users