[ale] Lowest Power MythTV back-end?

[JD]

On 11/20/2013 07:33 AM, Boris Borisov wrote:
> Somebody in myth wiki reports for:
> 
> Intel Atom N270 & Intel chipset
> 
> Results are: 
> Excellent with SD, and the menus perform great at 1080p.  Video at 1080p is un-watchable.

Thanks. I read something like that in the Myth-Wiki.

There is a HUGE difference between SD and HD recording. I don't have any SD
recording devices that work anymore after the digital TV transition. Thank you
congress and the FCC.  My "cable ready" TVs are, oddly, NOT cable ready anymore
even with QAM tuners. December 1st, Comcast has announced (got a letter) they
are encrypting all remaining QAM channels. BTW, I dumped cable last year.

Found a blog from 2011 where someone was using an E8400 with 2 digital tuners
and 1 front-end. He was using a cheap NAS.
http://www.mlaronson.com/low-power-mythtv-architecture/arch-diagram  Claims it
handles recording 4 hidef streams while one is played. Seems like a start,
though I wonder how he can record 4 streams with only 2 tuners?

I have these CPUs/MBs available:
* AMD E350 - only 2G RAM; sips power 16W, quiet (no fans).
* C2D E6600 - only 2G RAM; sucks power, very noisy (newer PSU needed)
* C2D E8400 - plenty of RAM, good with power, reasonably quiet

I would prefer to keep using virtualization so a dedicated system is not
required, but that has recently run into issues.  Since the tuners are
networked, doing a build on one system, then just swapping the HDD into the
other physical boxes should work fine.