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Creating a "MythTV Extender"?

S

SSTwinrova

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Apr 14, 2004
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Does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about building a low-power/noise box whose sole purpose would be a MythTV frontend? Ideally it would sit on a desk and be very unobtrusive, be controllable via a remote, and be outputting to a VGA monitor. I stumbled across this (http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.12/.f) which is along the lines of what I figure I'll have to go with, so does anyone have any knowledge or recommendations for parts? Thanks.
 
Via mini-ITX boards are popular for this. Most people pick up a board with TV out of some sort, and use the PCI slot for some manner of expansion card. Have you checked http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/ at all?
 
I had started to see that Mini-ITX was a pretty popular form factor for this type of device, and thanks for the link -- I hadn't seen it yet but will be sure to check it out. Luckily, I don't need the TV out as this will just be going to a computer monitor (and the backend will probably be much closer to a normal case in size).

Here's an additional question: What formats/codecs can I reasonably expect this device to be able to handle? I figure the streaming TV will likely be MPEG-2 (for SD), but I also have some Xvid files I'd like this to be able to playback.
 
Well... it IS a Via CPU, so I'm not sure as to how happy it'd be with XViD. It'll do mpeg2 okay, though. A bit of research might be in order, perhaps.
 
alan.p said:
Well... it IS a Via CPU, so I'm not sure as to how happy it'd be with XViD. It'll do mpeg2 okay, though. A bit of research might be in order, perhaps.
Click to expand...
Under Linux the Epias are more capable, Xvid playback is possible.
 
Just a quick browse through the EPIA motherboards on Via's site shows the newer/higher end Mini-ITX boards with "MPEG-2 Decoder/MPEG-4 Acceleration" -- my interpretation is that (in this case) MPEG-2 decoding is entirely hardware based, but MPEG-4 will still need some assistance from the CPU, correct?
 
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