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On 18 December 2011, at 03:07, Grant Edwards wrote: |
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> ... |
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>>> ? I absolutely dread going to |
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>>> back to MythTv with a big, hot, noisy PC sitting next to my TV? |
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>> |
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>> I bought an eMachines 1401 recently - it's not as perfectly silent as |
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>> the PlayOn (which is fanless), but it's *very* close. It's an AMD |
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>> atom-equivalent, dual-core, mini desktop PC, about 7" on a side and |
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>> maybe 1" thick. Right now, powered on with no load just to judge it |
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>> for this conversation, I can hear it if my ear is a foot away from |
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>> it, but not 2 or 3 feet away, not against the normal background noise |
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>> in my apartment (clock ticking in the kitchen and so on). Right now |
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>> its hard-drive is louder than its fan (which is shifting so little |
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>> air that I can barely feel it, even putting my hand an inch from the |
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>> grille). I think that if you load it up with an emerge then the fan |
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>> will ramp up a bit, but I doubt if you'd notice it when watching a |
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>> movie. |
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> |
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> There are some platforms that are getting pretty decent, but they |
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> still cost 5X as much as a set-top-box box, draw 10X as much power, |
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> and are about 4X larger. They're probably approaching "tolerable", |
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> but compared to something like a Roku or SageTv box, they're still an |
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> embarassment. |
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> |
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> I used a Mac Mini for a while as a MythTv frontend, and it was quiet |
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> enough that it wasn't noticable unless the room was dead silent. It |
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> would have been OK if I had been able to get DVI output working. |
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You're absolutely not doing the current generation of atom-type mini-PCs justice. |
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My 250GB eMachine cost about the same as the PlayOnHD STB does, maybe 10% more, except the PlayON comes without a hard-drive or wifi. |
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I took great pains to describe how there is *technically* a little fan noise from the eMachine, but I'll believe you can hear the difference in real-life after you've proved it. |
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Neil has told you the same thing about his Revo - those are considered the go-to off-the-shelf HTCP front-end these days. |
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Indeed, they don't have optical drives, and indeed you can spend a lot of money if you want to put an ATX mainboard in a fancy brushed-aluminium Silbverstone case. But if that's what you want, an STB wouldn't be meeting your needs, anyway. |
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On the matter of noise and power-consumption, the difference between set-top-boxes and atom-type mini-PCs is so insignificant that I can't believe anyone splitting hairs over the matter has tried them both. |
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Stroller. |