Via EPIA Media Box?
I'm considering building myself a Via EPIA-based media/NAS box in the new year, as a replacement for the LinkStation NAS I have upstairs (my latest Unison run took 24 hours due to the limited RAM) and the ThinkPad X22 I have under the hifi (as it only plays music, and doesn't do video).
I notice that all of the EPIAs have hardware MPEG acceleration, though I'm not sure what models have what features. I plan eventually on using the box to play DVDs and random MPEG streams from (say) BitTorrent, and play and record DVB-T streams. Can anyone say if the Via EPIA MII 6000 is capable of this, or should I go for something a little more powerful like the SP8000EG? The former has an "MPEG Accelerator" whereas the latter explictly states accelerated MPEG decoding and encoding. Please email me or leave comments, thanks!
Posted by daniels at Sun Dec 3 17:32:01 2006:
Via support is sketchy at best. Basically everything under the sun has support for accelerating colourspace conversion (YUV -> RGB) as well as scaling in hardware, but it's only Via and i810 (I mean i810, not anything above it), have support for accelerating the earlier decoding stages.
But the Via driver is close to unmaintained these days, and Via themselves aren't exactly helpful. Also, last I saw, using that involved using binary blobs with Xine forks; hopefully that part's changed for the better now.
Get a Pentium-M. You won't regret it.
Posted by Forest at Sun Dec 3 17:49:24 2006:
But the Via driver is close to unmaintained these days, and Via themselves aren't exactly helpful. Also, last I saw, using that involved using binary blobs with Xine forks; hopefully that part's changed for the better now.
Get a Pentium-M. You won't regret it.
Here's a slightly unrelated question (but you and your readers seem like the people who would know the answer.) Does the latest stable kernel support VIA's new C7-M processor, the energy efficient one in the new Everex Stepnote NC1500 laptops that are selling for $500?? On average, it uses less than a watt of energy and seems like the perfect laptop except I'm not sure it's supported in Linux.
Posted by Ryan at Sun Dec 3 18:29:27 2006:
EPIA boxes are great for firewalls and small server setups, but aren't up to snuff for video, imo. You'll be better off putting together a quiet intel/amd box.
Posted by Sven at Sun Dec 3 19:36:53 2006:
I am running a fanless EPIA ML8000 box for a few weeks now (see http://svenfoo.geekheim.de/index.php/2006-11-20/music-everywhere/). I am using vlc for video playback and all videos and DVDs are running smooth with a CPU usage below 40%. To achieve this video playback performance, vlc makes use of the XvMC extension of X server.
I am not doing DVB-T playback or recording on this box, so I can't tell anything about that.
Posted by Sven at Sun Dec 3 20:11:12 2006:
I am not doing DVB-T playback or recording on this box, so I can't tell anything about that.
For what it's worth: I run my media machine (DVB-S recording and playback, DVD playback etc.) with an EPIA board a bit slower than the current MII 6000 (some 800MHz C7 IIRC). MPEG2 Playback happens through a full featured DVB-S card though, so I can't guarantee that the CPU itself would be able to do this on its own. I did MPEG2 transcoding though, and it did that at approx. 4x normal playback speed, so keeping in mind that in my experience, transcoding takes about half as much CPU power as playback, this would mean that the MII 6000 should be capable of doing playback reasonably well.
Posted by wannes at Sun Dec 3 20:36:04 2006:
Posted by Brad at Sun Dec 3 22:33:01 2006:
I run a SP8000E with a PVR-250 MythTV 0.20 on FC6. My display is a 24" dell running in 1920x1200 resolution. It runs great in general usage. However, if I'm doing multiple activities concurrently, such as watching a DVD while recording a television show, things become a bit sluggish though video still plays smoothly. Overall, I love it, though. It decodes various video codecs from torrent sites fine, but can't really do HD. Hope that helps. Shoot me an email if you need any more information.
Posted by Mads Chr. Olesen at Mon Dec 4 09:08:25 2006:
I had a VIA box for recording and playing back TV (using a Hauppage card) - unfortunately the model I had seems to have a hardware malfunction that makes the box lock up hard when a lot of bus-traffic is going on (like a transfer from the TV-card to the hard-drive). It has been known like forever, but VIA has been "uninterested" in fixing (or just acknowledging) the problem. The problem is documented at <a href="http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=60131&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear">http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=60131&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear</a>
Posted by Brooks R Robinson at Mon Dec 4 13:57:32 2006:
Try looking at http://www.mini-itx.com/ for all your strange computing needs.
Posted by Ale at Sun Feb 4 13:16:14 2007:
Posted by Justin Mason at Fri Apr 6 13:10:13 2007:
I have an EPIA ME6000 as a PVR running linux + mythtv. The VIA onboard video hardware is totally unused now, due to their crappy proprietary attitude and policies. on top of this, there have been recurrent glitches with DMA. avoid at all costs!
here's a great alternative: get a cheapo Pentium M laptop. extremely low-power, much better support for (and by) OSS operating systems, and made by a company that doesn't have their head up their ass...
here's a great alternative: get a cheapo Pentium M laptop. extremely low-power, much better support for (and by) OSS operating systems, and made by a company that doesn't have their head up their ass...
