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Anyone use old CRT Imac g3 as a frontend?
http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7180
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Author:  Will [ Fri Dec 02, 2005 7:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Anyone use old CRT Imac g3 as a frontend?

I had gotten a imac 266 rev b. from my cousin for free. I didnt know what to do with it so I turned it into a mythfrontend on ubuntu.

I had to compile mythtv-frontend from source for .18 in breazy I have the .deb if anyone wants it.

The hard drive is loud but doesnt go much once it boots into myth.

Only problem is it seems to drag ass when watching video. I have had to drop resolution for livetv pvr-350 stream to 320 X 320 and bitrate to 1400 to get it to play withouth skipping. CPU goes to 99% at full res.

at the reduced res it looks ok and plays back nicely! I am very proud of my acomplishment it was hard work to compile and everything else.

these things can be had for free or for $50 so if it can work better it would be great!

Anyway to improve that or just need a faster imac like a g3 400?

I think they are great cuase they are in shape of tv and all in one and mad cheap. They look good too.

Great for a bedroom tv or kitchen or bathroom.

The rev. b has an irda port on front which got retired in the 333 and 400 and up, anyone got that working?

Author:  nigelpearson [ Sun Dec 04, 2005 4:28 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Anyone use old CRT Imac g3 as a frontend?

Will wrote:
I had gotten a imac 266 rev b. from my cousin for free. I didnt know what to do with it so I turned it into a mythfrontend on ubuntu.


Impressive! Now all you need to do is make a Knoppix distro with these .debs in it and call it KnoPpcMyth.

...
Quote:
Only problem is it seems to drag ass when watching video.


This will be a big problem on hardware like this. My rule of thumb is - if it can't play a DVD comfortably then it won't run MythTV very well.

When I was playing around with PIII 500s, the difference between 5fps SD playback and 25fps was whether the X server supports XV. The window you are running mythfrontend from should tell you if it is not in an XV compatible environment.

I first started on the OS X mythfrontend on a G4 400. It barely played back anything until Jeremiah worked out how to use QuickTime routines to speed up the colourspace translation and scaling. Now, this machine can _almost_ play back SD without skipping. In the future, I may be able to work out how to use the ATI graphics chips to do the MPEG2 decompression too, but for now anything less than a G3 600 is probably not enough. Anything less will need to turn down the resolution or bit rate.

Sorry if that isn't what you wanted to hear, Will.

Author:  Will [ Tue Dec 06, 2005 7:49 pm ]
Post subject:  LOL Not exactly what I wanted to hear but thanks!

I was excited about the idea of these $100 mythfrontend TVs - I guess it works ok with turning bitrate down and resolution but only for a hobbyist like me.

g3 600

Next thing I'm gonna try is xvid trasncoded video and see how that looks.

I can't do the DVD test on this thing cause it only has a CD drive.

Im gonna check for xv support now.

This thing has a real old ATI card with 6mb vram, xorg is using the ATI driver for it.

Thanks Nigel!

Author:  frego [ Wed Dec 14, 2005 10:46 am ]
Post subject: 

I've got a G3 350, I'm running OS 9.2. It doesn't seem to be able to play back my divx or xvid's very well... it's way choppy, but Quicktime .MOV files play flawlessly. So I'm thinking that if there was a way to stream something in the quicktime format then you'd be utilizing the ATI hardware instead of making it so processor intensive.

Kudos to you for putting Myth on that!

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