mini-ITX graphics woes

[Stewart C. Russell]

Hmm, a lot of options here. Basically, what I'm wanting to build is:

* a silent PC that draws very little power (hey, I mean, I can hardly be
Mr Green Energy if my PC's CPU alone draws 1/3 of the average European
domestic load ...)
* a DVD player
* a CD player
* (I'm undecided if I want one of these) a TV/PVR sort of thing.

As Lennart said, a Hauppauge decoder card might solve most of these
problems. But the regular graphics performance of the EPIA 800 under
Linux is pretty poor, so I might be yoking a thoroughbred to a carthorse.

It might be cheaper for me to buy one of the newer mini-ITX boards (that
have supported graphics, MPEG en-/de-coding, and handy things like
USB2.0 and 1394) and a much cheaper TV tuner card than buy the
Hauppauge. I'll need to cost it out.

If people are interested, I'll blog and/or wiki my findings.

Colin said:
> Have you tried ripping the DVD to disk or tried other formats?  You
> may even be able to encode to something less CPU intensive.

This might work, but I guess Catherine might not go for this. Waiting a
few hours to watch what we brought back from Blockbuster could have
repurcussions.

cheers,
 Stewart


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