{"id":445,"date":"2008-10-26T21:33:39","date_gmt":"2008-10-27T04:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/?p=445"},"modified":"2008-10-26T21:33:39","modified_gmt":"2008-10-27T04:33:39","slug":"wanted-to-buy-new-mythtv-frontend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2008\/10\/26\/wanted-to-buy-new-mythtv-frontend\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanted to Buy: New MythTV Frontend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At some point in the not-too-distant future, I&#8217;d like to replace my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mythtv.org\/\">Myth<\/a> frontend.  I have been doing some thinking about what I really need for this computer, which sits with my home theatre equipment and makes me watch the TV I want to watch.<\/p>\n<p>The current incarnation has a single Hauppauge tuner card for recording.  I also have a dual-tuner card in my main computer for a total of three.  The magic of MythTV means that I can watch any recordings on the frontend.<\/p>\n<p>I am now starting to think that I don&#8217;t really need to record on my frontend.  I could do all of the recording on my main computer, and just do playback on the frontend.  That would eliminate the need for much storage on the frontend, so I could eliminate the hard drive altogether and just have a few gigs of flash for the operating system.  Everything else could be on a network share.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have any immediate plans to go to high definition, so the processor needs for playback-only would be pretty minimal by modern standards.  A little <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Intel_Atom\">Atom<\/a> processor should do it.  The Atom + motherboard should sip little enough power that it can be passively cooled, if the case is right.<\/p>\n<p>So, my list of requirements becomes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Intel Atom or similar low-power processor.<\/li>\n<li>digital video output (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Digital_Visual_Interface\">DVI-D or DVI-I<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hdmi\">HDMI<\/a>) and digital audio output (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/SPDIF\">S\/PDI<\/a>F coax or fiber).<\/li>\n<li>a motherboard that can boot from USB (or a CF card or something).<\/li>\n<li>some kind of remote control input.  I haven&#8217;t quite worked this one out yet: it could just be a serial or USB port with some generic IR receiver.<\/li>\n<li>a nice little case that blends well into a home theatre rack.<\/li>\n<li><strong>no<\/strong> fans, hard drive, or other moving parts.<\/li>\n<li>ethernet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I have looked around, but can&#8217;t find anything that hits all of the key points there.  (Some of the contenders I have looked at are <a href=\"http:\/\/us.shuttle.com\/Models.aspx\">Shuttle<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hushtechnologies.net\/\">Hush<\/a>.  The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.silentpcreview.com\/article601-page1.html\">picoPSU<\/a> could figure into the plan too.)<\/p>\n<p>Anybody have any suggestions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At some point in the not-too-distant future, I&#8217;d like to replace my Myth frontend. I have been doing some thinking about what I really need for this computer, which sits with my home theatre equipment and makes me watch the TV I want to watch. The current incarnation has a single Hauppauge tuner card for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}