Opinions: Via EPIA EN motherboard

[cclayton]

Has anyone considered this for a sage platform?

Via EPIA EN

Pros:
- Gigabit LAN
- Hardware MPEG2 decoding
- Hardware HDTV encoder
- Very low power consumption
- Fanless is an option
- small form factor
- ? (opinions?)

Cons:
- Max 4 hard drives (you could get around this via NAS)
- 1 PCI slot (2 with an expansion card - not sure if this will work with capture cards)
- slow CPU (may not be an issue with all the built-in hardware)
- ? (opinions?)

Also, any opinions on what OS it run (Linux v.s. Windows)? I'm leaning towards Linux to try to reduce the overhead as much as possible.

Cheers,

[lovingHDTV]

Just one thing to investigate.

The MPEG2 decoding is really just acceleration, not full decoding. And previously only 1 decoder was written to utilize this hardware, so in the end it did nothing for you.

HDTV does not need an encoder, it is already encoded as MPEG2.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

HDTV does not need an encoder, it is already encoded as MPEG2.

That's referring to the HDTV output, like the TV encoder on a Video card.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by cclayton

Has anyone considered this for a sage platform?

Via EPIA EN

Pros:
- Gigabit LAN
- Hardware MPEG2 decoding
- Hardware HDTV encoder
- Very low power consumption
- Fanless is an option
- small form factor
- ? (opinions?)

Cons:
- Max 4 hard drives (you could get around this via NAS)
- 1 PCI slot (2 with an expansion card - not sure if this will work with capture cards)
- slow CPU (may not be an issue with all the built-in hardware)
- ? (opinions?)

Also, any opinions on what OS it run (Linux v.s. Windows)? I'm leaning towards Linux to try to reduce the overhead as much as possible.

Cheers,

And if I was looking for a mini-itx form factor board I would look at this first:

LV-677

Intel CoreTM Duo processor support with Intel 945GM & ICH7M ,
DDR2 up to 3GB ,
Intel Gigabit Ethernet ,
6 x USB 2.0 ,
2 x COM ,
1 x SIR ,
Realtek 5.1 channel Audio,
IEEE1394 and GPIO Interface,
TV-out ,
SPDIF,
2 x SATA ,
PCI Express x16 slot & 2 x Mini-PCI socket

Gerry