I am a professor at a university, and I'm in the process of writing a grant for a MythTV setup (running KnoppMyth, of course) for use by the communication department.

Price isn't really an option... I just need to request the proper amount of money.

I'm curious about building a Pentium M system, due to the high performance and low power consumption/heat generation. Has anyone tried this? Are there any caveats I should be aware of for a system of this kind? Does a 2.0+ Ghz Pentium M have the guts for HDTV playback?

Thanks for any guidance you can provide.


Rob

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Silverstone LC10|MSI K8N Neo4-F|1GB PC3200|Athlon 64 X2 4200+|NEC 3550A DVD-RW
750GB + 400GB w/Storage Groups|eVGA GeForce 7600 GS w/VGA out to Aquos 32" LCD |PVR-500|PVR-250|SiliconDust HDHomerun

Can that grant cover the cost of flying me out to set the box up?! If you want an system for HDTV look no further than the Dragon. I wouldn't recommend a 2.0 GHz processor for HD playback.

With MythTV HDTV PVRs already here and H.264 coming along eventually, I recommend as much real processor throughput as you can afford. I'd go with a fast Pentium D as my first choice and then as a close second with fast Athlon X2.

If it can smoothly play the HiDef Serenity trailer (1920x1080 encoded H.264) then you are in the right zone. Buy a fullsize case with some good quiet fans because heat is going to be an issue with either processor. Noise will probably be an issue although you can minimize with fanless Nvidia video cards, fanless power supplies ($$$!), etc.

Andrew Lynch

Forgive my ignorance, but can Knoppix take advantage of the dual-core processors without recompiling the kernel with special settings?

Cecil, I'd love to have you out to set it up, but I really doubt you'd find Ohio very interesting.

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Silverstone LC10|MSI K8N Neo4-F|1GB PC3200|Athlon 64 X2 4200+|NEC 3550A DVD-RW
750GB + 400GB w/Storage Groups|eVGA GeForce 7600 GS w/VGA out to Aquos 32" LCD |PVR-500|PVR-250|SiliconDust HDHomerun

well not sure about knoppix, but knoppmyth is compiled with an SMP kernel by default, so it should take advantage of any dual processors/cores.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Yep. Between the fronend, the backend, the mysql server, the lirc daemon, ... there are plenty of processes for the OS to distribute around multiple cores. The limit on this might be the decoding for the frontend since I don't think it's multi threaded.

The reviews I've been reading seem to show the Athlon 64 X2 slightly outperforming a comparable Pentium D, even for video encoding. Is there any other rationale for going with the Pentium as opposed to the X2?

The Communications Lab is really cold and you want to use the box as a room heater this winter?

good one!

_________________
Silverstone LC10|MSI K8N Neo4-F|1GB PC3200|Athlon 64 X2 4200+|NEC 3550A DVD-RW
750GB + 400GB w/Storage Groups|eVGA GeForce 7600 GS w/VGA out to Aquos 32" LCD |PVR-500|PVR-250|SiliconDust HDHomerun