Designing an HTPC

[Pinnerite]

My wife has been nagging me for ages to get on with this, so I spent most of
today comparing cases/components etc. I am now stuck at what power of
processor to use. It has to be an AMD A series and will be placed in a Zotac
A75-ITX WIFI B-series motherboard.

It will only be used for recording and redisplaying broadcast TV as well as
Internet streamed video but I plan to use a quad-tuner TV card. To enable me
to use a low profile case, I need to use as low a powered processor that I
can get away with, otherwise its heat sink might raise the internal profile
too much. Obviously a fan-less system would be best but I wonder if that is
a realistic proposition.

The lowest powered AMD A series processors draw a TDP of 65 watts which
appears to be at the top end for a fan-less solution.

Am I being completely unrealistic, given that the power supply bricks for
low profile cases seem to run at about 150 watts?


--
___________________________________________________

Mageia 2 for x86_64, Kernel: 3.4.34-desktop-1.mga2
KDE version 4.8.5 Running on an AMD 4-core processor

[Martin Gregorie]

On Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:04:35 +0100, Pinnerite wrote:

> My wife has been nagging me for ages to get on with this, so I spent
> most of today comparing cases/components etc. I am now stuck at what
> power of processor to use. It has to be an AMD A series and will be
> placed in a Zotac A75-ITX WIFI B-series motherboard.
>
> It will only be used for recording and redisplaying broadcast TV as well
> as Internet streamed video but I plan to use a quad-tuner TV card. To
> enable me to use a low profile case, I need to use as low a powered
> processor that I can get away with, otherwise its heat sink might raise
> the internal profile too much. Obviously a fan-less system would be best
> but I wonder if that is a realistic proposition.
>
> The lowest powered AMD A series processors draw a TDP of 65 watts which
> appears to be at the top end for a fan-less solution.
>
> Am I being completely unrealistic, given that the power supply bricks
> for low profile cases seem to run at about 150 watts?

Have you considered using a RaspberryPi? They burn less than 5 watts.
No PCI bus, of course, but if there are any USB-connected TV tuners then
Bob may well be your uncle.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

[Pinnerite]

I have read several reviews of Raspberry Pi systems but they would be
stretched to do what I want to do and I would end up with the proverbial
camel.

[unruh]

On 2013-04-17, Pinnerite <pinn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Martin Gregorie wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:04:35 +0100, Pinnerite wrote:
>>
>>> My wife has been nagging me for ages to get on with this, so I spent
>>> most of today comparing cases/components etc. I am now stuck at what
>>> power of processor to use. It has to be an AMD A series and will be
>>> placed in a Zotac A75-ITX WIFI B-series motherboard.
>>>
>>> It will only be used for recording and redisplaying broadcast TV as well
>>> as Internet streamed video but I plan to use a quad-tuner TV card. To
>>> enable me to use a low profile case, I need to use as low a powered
>>> processor that I can get away with, otherwise its heat sink might raise
>>> the internal profile too much. Obviously a fan-less system would be best
>>> but I wonder if that is a realistic proposition.
>>>
>>> The lowest powered AMD A series processors draw a TDP of 65 watts which
>>> appears to be at the top end for a fan-less solution.
>>>
>>> Am I being completely unrealistic, given that the power supply bricks
>>> for low profile cases seem to run at about 150 watts?
>>
>> Have you considered using a RaspberryPi? They burn less than 5 watts.
>> No PCI bus, of course, but if there are any USB-connected TV tuners then
>> Bob may well be your uncle.
>>
>
> I have read several reviews of Raspberry Pi systems but they would be
> stretched to do what I want to do and I would end up with the proverbial
> camel.

Perhaps if you told us why a RPi would be streched to do what you want
to do, it would help people figure out what you want to do, and what the
best advice would be. 65 watts is quite a lot (it is like putting a
light bulb into a case) for fanless.
>
>>

[Pinnerite]

As I mentioned, I plan to use a quad DVB T/T2 tuner for reception. I
originally intended to have 1TB drive for storage but I am beginning to
think that might be too low as my family pics, clips and videos will go on
there as well as the digitised conversion of my kodachrome slides.

It may also hold the digitised conversion of my LP collection (when I get
round to it).

So far, as a family, we have not had the need for BluRay. My wife's laptop
has a player but as the o/s is Mageia it is lifeless to date so I am
excluding that from my projections. I will probably fit a DVD reader or
writer if only to handle the initial install software.

There is the strong likelihood that it will be required for web browsing
generally. Given that screen resolutions are only going up as well as screen
sizes, I do not want to be left with a gasping stuttering system that needs
replacing, let alone one that has the restriction of being ARM based,
somewhat limiting my choices of software. I may run MythTV, XBMC or maybe
just kaffeine.

Finally, I definitely do not want to be a pioneer ... again. Hence my
caution.

Incidentally, receive wisdom is that the TDP is the maximum not the
quiescent or average output power.

[J G Miller]

On Thursday, April 18th, 2013, at 11:31:57h +0100, Pinnerite explained:

> As I mentioned, I plan to use a quad DVB T/T2 tuner for reception.

For better range of program choices, you should also be considering
a DVB-s2 tuner and a satellite dish on a rotator.

How else may one watch Al Sharpton on MSNBC?

> I originally intended to have 1TB drive for storage

You can now get 2 TB in 2,5 inch format but the price is
still rather high.

For a media center, it is best to get as large as capacity
as possible.

[Darklight]

Pinnerite wrote:

> quad DVB T/T2

whats the make of your quad DVB T/T2 and will it work with tvtime or mythtv
without much trouble?

[Tony Houghton]

[Follow-ups overridden, I'd like to keep this thread in ucol, hope
that's OK]

On Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:04:35 +0100

Pinnerite <pinn...@gmail.com> wrote:

> My wife has been nagging me for ages to get on with this, so I spent most of
> today comparing cases/components etc. I am now stuck at what power of
> processor to use. It has to be an AMD A series and will be placed in a Zotac
> A75-ITX WIFI B-series motherboard.
>
> It will only be used for recording and redisplaying broadcast TV as well as
> Internet streamed video but I plan to use a quad-tuner TV card. To enable me
> to use a low profile case, I need to use as low a powered processor that I
> can get away with, otherwise its heat sink might raise the internal profile
> too much. Obviously a fan-less system would be best but I wonder if that is
> a realistic proposition.
>
> The lowest powered AMD A series processors draw a TDP of 65 watts which
> appears to be at the top end for a fan-less solution.
>
> Am I being completely unrealistic, given that the power supply bricks for
> low profile cases seem to run at about 150 watts?

Why does it have to be that type of CPU, and aren't you considering HD
playback? A low power processor isn't likely to be adequate for HD, and
last time I checked there was no practical support in Linux for hardware
acceleration on AMD GPUs, so you'd need to add an NVidia card. AFAIK
hardware acceleration in Linux does work on Intel APUs, but is still at
a more experimental stage than NVidia's VDPAU.

[J G Miller]

On Thursday, April 18th, 2013, at 15:43:17h +0100, Tony Houghton wrote:

> last time I checked there was no practical support in Linux for hardware
> acceleration on AMD GPUs

Well maybe no *practical* support yet, but give people time ... ;)

<http://www.phoronix.COM/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_opensource_uvd&num=1>

QUOTE

AMD Releases Open-Source UVD Video Support

Published on April 02, 2013

Within the next few hours AMD will be publishing open-source
driver code that exposes their Unified Video Decoder (UVD)
engine on modern Radeon HD graphics cards.

This will finally allow open-source graphics drivers to
take advantage of hardware-accelerated video decoding

UNQUOTE

AMD is to be applauded for this development unlike the previous
unfriendly attitude towards open source of ATi before it was
taken over by AMD.

Notwithstanding, the well established hardware acceleration for video playback
(not just general hardware acceleration for 2D and 3D) is as you observe with
nVidia graphics cards.

And in an earlier article

<http://www.phoronix.COM/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI5Mzk>

QUOTE

The Video Acceleration State On Linux GPU Drivers

February 05, 2013

...

AMD's XvBA (X-Video Bitstream Acceleration) has had an
interesting history and came much later after NVIDIA introduced
VDPAU to bid farewell to the now rather useless XvMC.

XvBA still isn't too widely supported by Linux multimedia software
directly but rather relies on out-of-tree patches or using the VA-API
wrapper library that is no longer actively maintained.

UNQUOTE

The recommendation in the article for building an HTPC is --

QUOTE

As I have written in Phoronix articles many times before,
my particular recommendation for those HTPC users or anyone
just watching many movies/videos on their Linux desktop is to
use NVIDIA GeForce GPUs with the proprietary driver.

NVIDIA VDPAU is widely-supported and tends to "just work" on
any modern Linux distribution, the binary driver, and all popular
Linux multimedia software like XBMC, VLC, and MPlayer.

NVIDIA's Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix does a very
good job at offloading the video decode work to the graphics hardware
rather than the CPU.

Even a very low-end GeForce GPU can get the job done.

UNQUOTE

But will Pinnerite take note?

[Tony Houghton]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:03:59 +0000 (UTC)
J G Miller <mil...@yoyo.ORG> wrote:

> On Thursday, April 18th, 2013, at 15:43:17h +0100, Tony Houghton wrote:
>
> > last time I checked there was no practical support in Linux for hardware
> > acceleration on AMD GPUs
>
> Well maybe no *practical* support yet, but give people time ... ;)
>
> <http://www.phoronix.COM/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_opensource_uvd&num=1>
>
> QUOTE
>
> AMD Releases Open-Source UVD Video Support
>
> Published on April 02, 2013
>
> Within the next few hours AMD will be publishing open-source
> driver code that exposes their Unified Video Decoder (UVD)
> engine on modern Radeon HD graphics cards.

Excellent news! I see they updated the article later and said the code
has actually been released. But I bet they held the publishing date back
one day :-).

Further down the article:

| Interestingly, and to much pleasure, the UVD support is being
| exposed over VDPAU.

I concur with the pleasure; as I said, VDPAU is better supported than
VAAPI so, other than teething problems with the new back-end, AMD
support should be able to catch up with NVidia as soon as distros start
integrating it.

[Pinnerite]

Check this link.

http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6284

It comes with Linux drivers

As I reported here a few months ago, Black Gold wrote me that they are
working on open source Linux drivers for their quad card but very, very
slowly.

[Pinnerite]

I saw a review of a commercial HTPC that used a core i3. I checked up and
found that its TDP was 55 watts but its performance was either much the same
or better than the AMD A10-5700. I then looked for comparable ITX boards of
which there were a few.

I fancy the Gigabyte GA-Z77N-Wi-Fi right now but I have yet to double-check
all the specs. My big worry was that the PCIe DVB-T/T2 card was not
compatible with the PCIx16 socket but I read that all the PCIe sockets are
upward and downward compatible - if the card fits. Now that is what I call
user-friendly.

I was planning to use 8GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600Mhz memory but one
article thought that might be overkill for an HTPC. Although it might be
true, I can see the use of mine extended to other things as well. I can
image letter writing during the commercial breaks for example, while
flicking the news channels to follow some story or other or my wife
preferring the comfort of the large screen and small keyboard for emailing
etc.

If anyone disagrees, please pitch in.

Alan

[Bit Twister]

On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:19:32 +0100, Pinnerite wrote:
>
> I was planning to use 8GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600Mhz memory but one
> article thought that might be overkill for an HTPC.

$ w
07:31:47 up 1 day, 6:48, 3 users, load average: 0.05, 0.03, 0.12

$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3702 3448 254 0 79 2903
-/+ buffers/cache: 465 3237
Swap: 4999 319 4680

I am running 3 homerun dual network tuners. They stream the tv channel
in mpeg2 format. No transcoding required. Running Maga3 64 bit beta4 with
rkhunter and msec rpm checks and whatnot. As you can see I still get
into swap running with an AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 215 Processor

Out of the 6 channels I can record at once, I only get 4 recording
once in awhile a week. Most of the time it is 3. No users are logged
in. Those 3 users seen above are root, 2 of which are zombies.
I view recordings/tv from my web browsing node.

I use http://www.schedulesdirect.org/ for the tv listings which means
an update once a day. That frees up cpu by not having to scan tv
channels up programming information.

> Although it might be
> true, I can see the use of mine extended to other things as well. I can
> image letter writing during the commercial breaks for example,

I do love the MythTV commercial skipping feature. Saves me 20 minutes
an hour. You can bookmark exit mythtv, bring it back up later and continue
watching the recording.

http://www.mythtv.org/detail/mythtv

[Pinnerite]

In the past I spent many hours to get MythTV to work, eventually I did. This
was before digital TV. I never knew about advert skipping in modern times
though.

Right now all the attractive looking cases are so low profile that few bits
will fit. The alternatives seem to be designed against Soviet era tanks. I
will press on.

[Bit Twister]

On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:38:41 +0100, Pinnerite wrote:

> In the past I spent many hours to get MythTV to work, eventually I did.

I hear that. Since I do clean installs. It chewed up lots of time
until I automated a bunch of it. Even wrote some sql scripts to
automagically disable the 64 unwanted channels and rename the 27
desired channels found by my tuners.

[bad sector]

On 04/17/2013 05:04 PM, Pinnerite wrote:
> My wife has been nagging me for ages to get on with this, so I spent most of
> today comparing cases/components etc. I am now stuck at what power of
> processor to use. It has to be an AMD A series and will be placed in a Zotac
> A75-ITX WIFI B-series motherboard.
>
> It will only be used for recording and redisplaying broadcast TV as well as
> Internet streamed video but I plan to use a quad-tuner TV card. To enable me
> to use a low profile case, I need to use as low a powered processor that I
> can get away with, otherwise its heat sink might raise the internal profile
> too much. Obviously a fan-less system would be best but I wonder if that is
> a realistic proposition.
>
> The lowest powered AMD A series processors draw a TDP of 65 watts which
> appears to be at the top end for a fan-less solution.
>
> Am I being completely unrealistic, given that the power supply bricks for
> low profile cases seem to run at about 150 watts?

all i can tell you is that I have a core-8 amd and loads of ram and
video processing yet rosegarden (midi editor) often hoses me with "not
enough cpu power" or the like.

[Pinnerite]

Right, my latest (and expensive) parts list is intended to be quiet:

Case: Silver Origen AE S10V Will look good if nothing else.
Power: Zalman almost silent 500w
Board: Gigabyte GA-Z77N-WIFI
CPU: Intel Core-i3-3220 (55W TDP)
Cooler: Noctua NH-L9i Quiet CPU Cooler
Memory: Crucial Ballistix DDR3 8GB
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 64MB cache
DVB-TV: TBS 6284 Quad channel Tuner

Only outstanding query. The DVD R/W has to be a slot-loader. I am trying
to discover if I need something special to go with the Origen case.

My desire for fan-less meant sacrificing too much performance. This is
intended to be a compromise.