Hi,
my current VDR works fine with 3 Sat cards and a fanless case so far - but the case is quite bulky, and since I'm going to move to a new home shortly, I am looking for a nice fanless streaming solution. Xine-plugin works fine so far, and I can use Reinhard's patched xine player on my laptop nicely. The best part of this solution is that you get a completely remote box including OSD and recording playback (albeit without burning DVDs or something on the client but so be it).
My new solution should be able to handle to following requirements:
- decode 1080p / H.264 (just in case this becomes widely available in the future...). - DVI or HDMI out up to 1080p - S/PDIF out incl. AC3 passthrough. - display the VDR server's OSD as if it were local - control the VDR server with an IR remote (via LIRC or whatever).
(aside: a 100 mbit network should be able to handle a HDTV stream - right?)
I see several options so far:
- re-use my old AMD64 3200+ (2 GHz single core S939), Asus A8V (full size ATX w/ AGP) and a fanless Nvidia card in a new HTPC case with a heatpipe cooler. Nice for the moment but unlikely to be able to handle HDTV decoding. Or is it? (such cases aren't exactly cheap ...). Since ffmpeg isn't multithreading capable yet (last time I looked), a dual-core CPU makes little sense. Needs a full size case anyway due to the AGP card (low-profile passive cooled AGP card anyone?). Bulky.
- build a new streaming client with a Via Epia EX board (CX700M2 w/ MPEG4 decoding support). At the moment the viaexp driver is required (unichrome and openchrome don't seem to cut it), and one needs the Via patched xine that AFAIK does not support netvdr:/ MRLs. Has anyone tried to patch the Via xine to do that? Is it stable? Is the fanless 1 GHz CPU sufficient for HD decoding, or is the fan-cooled 1.5 GHz CPU required?
- same board running Windows XP (yuck) and a Windows player. Which windows player will handle the OSD correctly (or rather: which VDR plugin does it talk to that sends the OSD correctly, like xine-plugin) and use the MPEG4 hardware decoder? Vlc?
- µATX board like Abit AN-M2 w/ AMD64 BE-2350 CPU (as for dual-core see above but these CPUs are quite efficient) and a µATX heatpipe case (which one)? Little MPEG4 hardware support.
- standalone HDTV multimedia player. There are several players built around a Sigma EM8620/21/22 chip but which one will handle a http or vtp stream? Streamdev-server or ffnetdev or xine-plugin or xineliboutput?
- what else? what are you using?