Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:24:34 +0000 From: Dieter <freebsd@sopwith.solgatos.com> To: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD as a HTPC! Message-ID: <200811271824.SAA28283@sopwith.solgatos.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:58:04 %2B0100." <20081127135804.4961191d@devil>
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You can call it a HTPC, media center, DVR, PVR, or whatever. Problem #1 is how to get video to the nice TV/display/screen. Depending on your hardware you might need s-video, composite, component, RF, RGB (HV sync, composite sync, or sync-on-green), DVI/HDMI, or displayport. Have I left out any? Some of these are hard to find outputs for. :-( Problem #2 is decoding the codec(s) you have media in. If the source is high definition, you need a lot of CPU, or GPU support. A lot of video is in mpeg2 format, including all OTA TV in the US, most DVDs, some BluRay, etc. Mpeg2 can benefit from Xv and XvMC. If you want XvMC, the only open source choice seems to be VIA Chrome. http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=openchrome&sektion=4 Hmmm is this the same as x11-drivers/xf86-video-openchrome in ports? Is anyone successfully using this? Then we have this, although I don't see a mention of XvMC in the posting. http://ftp.intron.ac/tmp/xf86-video-via-linux.tar.gz See "Anyone would help me to test this port? Another VIA UniChrome/Chrome9 Driver" in -multimedia@ from intron@intron.ac on 2008-11-12. AMD/ATI claims that they have released enough documentation for someone to implement Xv and XvMC, but as far as I know no one has done so. They seem more interested in 3D games. :-( Problem #3 is keeping the noise down, which means no disks and keep the power usage down to reduce or eliminate the need for fans. I assume that NFS is as brain damaged as always? ("stale file handles" and such) Does FreeBSD have an alternative?
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