Does the DSL store sell a media server?
Forum: Hardware Talk
Topic: Does the DSL store sell a media server?
started by: nickelplated
Posted by nickelplated on Mar. 20 2007,22:02
I'm looking about for prices on a quiet mini-itx kind of system that I can put in a living room to play videos from a samba share on the tv in the living room. Those cool little computers in the dsl store look great but I don't know if any of those mini-itx systems have pci slots in them so I could install a tv card that has a s-video output on it. There anything like that up in there?
Posted by humpty on Mar. 21 2007,00:39
if you look carefully at the pics, the epia 5000 has a pci slot. there is also a built in tv.out.
Posted by nickelplated on Mar. 21 2007,03:40
Interesting. Oh okay I see it now. Though it looks like the case that the epia comes in, the morex 3688, isn't wide enough to actually fit a full sized graphics card. Would I have to get some kind of specialized mini pci card if I needed more power than the integrated graphics?I wonder how fast is that integrated graphics? My current media server has an nvidia mx4000, which is, you know, way out of date, but it's still capable of playing most HD content without dropping frames on a linux system, though I have to have the nvidia driver installed first. Is the integrated graphics on the epia equivalent to something like an mx4000, performancewise? And what about the drivers for it, is that kind of thing included in most common distros? I've never seen drivers for accelerated video of integrated cards like that but then again I've never looked.
Posted by humpty on Mar. 21 2007,18:12
the epia 5000 uses a Trident CyberBlade i1 video accelerator.i think it might be old enough to be supported by the xfree86 (there's a mydsl for xfree86).
it's also supported by mplayer using vidix, (although i've never got vidix to work).
< http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/output-trad.html#vidix >
Posted by nickelplated on Mar. 22 2007,17:39
Cool, thanks for the info humpty!
Posted by dafunks on May 28 2007,12:03
Did you ever find out if this worked? id also like a silent media system. Was not sure if it could be done
Posted by curaga on May 28 2007,14:04
It is.Here's what I know about hardware movie acceleration:
Playing movies "motion compensation" and "iDCT" have to be calculated. Most graphic cards can do those, but many drivers cannot. If the cpu has to do those, 1,5Ghz isn't enough for HD content, or 700Mhz for dvd-quality. But when gpu handles those, dvd can be played with 50Mhz Pentium with 50% usage..
Nvidia & intel drivers can do those with Mpeg-2 (dvds), Via's can do mpeg-2, mpeg-4, h.264 and some other newer formats.
So, get one with Intel, Via or Nvidia graphics sys ;)
PS. Yes, Ati has no support on Linux for hardware movie accel, even though that has been possible from Rage II+dvd..
Posted by curaga on May 28 2007,14:18
For example that 533Mhz fanless they sell has a Via chip but only capable of mpeg-2 accel..< This > has the same graphics chip, but is smaller
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 28 2007,16:34
Just to make things straight...| Quote |
| PS. Yes, Ati has no support on Linux for hardware movie accel, even though that has been possible from Rage II+dvd.. |
Posted by curaga on May 29 2007,08:47
I was talking about frglx, the official driver.. Seems that it has some kind of support for those newest cards..But that AVIVO is just an api, which even Mplayer cannot use yet. The linux world uses Xvmc..
If the opensource ati driver has accel, great!
Anyway check this:
< http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/XvMC#ATI_Radeon >
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 29 2007,14:15
Hm, no idea if I ever was using xvmc (I've only been using basic Xv)... but AVIVO can be transparently used through the Xv extension (offloads onto the gpu's 3d engine). I suppose xvmc is an extension that's supposed to be more efficient?But there's always opengl playback on capable cards which should work
