Consider a mini-itx based system for your backend. A fraction of the power of a multi-GHz machine, on board firewire, support for up to two pci cards, fanless processor option and can be used with a fanless external power brick. You can go with laptop (2.5 in hard drives and slim optical) for a compact build or with standard size components for economy.
Inexpensive, quiet and power friendly... On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 18:04:18 -0600, Robert Denier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 2005-03-14 at 18:19 +0000, colliepon wrote: > > Just curious both what other people are doing, and feature discussion (not > > b*tching :) on other methods of reducing the power use of a myth box since > > it can build up over awhile. (and my next move may very well be off grid - > > satellite TV, running off solar or wind, so power use is critical but i'd > > prefer an alternative to the VCR) A few examples i'm thinking of: > > > > Could you schedule an expected time-on and time off to work with a normal > > block of programming? By shut down time I mean to properly suspend all > > tasks like commercial flagging without screwing up data or not doing them > > during the week at all. This would let you use a standard analog or > > digital wall timer to turn on the computer and satellite receiver for a > > given block of time (for instance 6:30pm to 10pm if you mostly like the > > evening block, or 11pm to about 3am if you like Adult Swim) since I don't > > know any other way to tell a computer to turn on at a given time. :) > > (though if someone knows of a computer-programmable wakeup solution please > > tell me!) > > > > Or perhaps having a C3 machine with a PVR500 for 24hr recording which can > > wake up a P4 with another card for overflow during peak hours, and also to > > do things like commercial flagging or recompression. (which also might need > > to schedule file moves, for instance a 120gig drive on the C3 and 500gig on > > the P4 as primary storage) > > > > Or maybe speed throttling certain cpu's might work - some of the new > > Centrino motherboards for desktop use > > http://www17.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20041224/index.html, laptops with > > a USB grabber, or even the underclocked Athlon XP > > http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041001/index.html - does anyone use > > anything like this? (or have any experience/insights worth sharing?) I've > > no clue how/if throttling is supported in linux, or mythTV or anything > > else, but it would be nice to let the cpu idle during daily recording and > > to speed up for flagging and transcoding. > > > > Is anyone else using a lower power design or strategy with Myth? > > > > > > Colliepon > > > > _______________________________________________ > > mythtv-users mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users > > I rather doubt that anything you can build yourself will every be 100% > designed to be efficient on power. That being said I'd seriously look > at laptops. If there is some way to get myth working with a power > efficient laptop, perhaps with some kind of Video to Firewire bridge > then your power issues are solved. > > Of course that might not be possible, and I don't know of any laptops > that support pci cards, although some might have a docking bay. They > are about the only entire systems I can think of that Must be designed > to be low power, that is assuming they are any good. > > Of course you can design a PC from the ground up to save power, but it > will still likely be considerably higher than a laptop probably.. > > > _______________________________________________ > mythtv-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users > > > _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
