John Turner wrote: > I gave up on HD playback using a PC before I even tried. But there > are options. > > I am currently using the I-O Data LinkPlayer 2 > http://www.iodata.com/usa/products/products.php? > cat=HNP&sc=AVEL&pId=AVLP2%2FDVDLA > But there are many more options (hardware HD playback). > > The problem is that is doesn't talk directly with MythTV, so you have > to do something about that. The most common solution is to just link > to your Myth recordings. The LP2 gets its show information from a web > server (wizd and swisscenter are two Linux compatible servers). > > Also I was able to run Mythfrontend on my Intel Core Solo Mac Mini > and watch HD recordings and Live HD. This was a 512MB base model. It > worked better than I expected, but not 100%.
Can you elaborate a bit about Myth on the Mini? Specifically, did you tinker with the digital audio outs, and are they well supported? When you say playback was "not 100%", what do you think was the limiting factor? Was it CPU (ie. would a Duo solve the problem) or was it the less-than-ideal onboard Intel video chipset? Was it a bandwidth or bottleneck from the backend server for some reason not the fault of the mini's? I'm currently considering platforms for my myth-frontend server. My dev platform for the front end is an Athlon 2100XP with a GeForce Ti4200 that I hope to get up and running some time this week. It's too large to be practical long-term, it's just for tinkering. I had looked at the mini and discounted it because of the single headphone jack out, previously. Then they released the Intel one w/ the optical audio out which seemed so debian-friendly, and my heart went all a-flutter again. My back-end is a P4 2.4Ghz w/ a big honking RAID5 array (around a terabyte) for storing the video, with 1 pchdtv-3000 card and 1 hauppage bttv card for capturing two streams, one hdtv, one not. Primary source will probably be qcam-tuned stations off the cable that I have in the house, unless when I get an antenna hooked up things look good for over-the-air reception in the SFBay area (not holding my breath in my condo with an internal antenna). So far, I have the drivers set up, I can talk to the card, and I can scan for channels (which doesn't work with out an antenna or the cable hooked up, of course). I need to grab another splitter this afternoon at the store before I can hook it up to the cable (w/o disconnecting the cable modem), then I can test to see how recording goes. Once I have it working, I'll certainly report back about my experiences with the pchdtv card. So that's my excited two cents about Myth, Aaron S. Joyner -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
