atom pc

[ttiell]

I want to run whs and sage tv together. Since it will be running all of the time, I want to make it low on the power usage. I see the Atom 330 as an option. Says that it is 1.6ghz, dual-core, hyper-threading. So that is like 4 processes running at once (kinda, I know HT doesn't mean another core). The system requirements are 1.5ghz, but in my experience with computers, you typically want to double system requirements. So I want to put this through a real test, 4 recorders (2 hd, 2 cable analog), and say 2-3 extenders (hd). Will this totally bog down the atom processor? Ram would be 2gb.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by ttiell

I want to run whs and sage tv together. Since it will be running all of the time, I want to make it low on the power usage. I see the Atom 330 as an option. Says that it is 1.6ghz, dual-core, hyper-threading. So that is like 4 processes running at once (kinda, I know HT doesn't mean another core). The system requirements are 1.5ghz, but in my experience with computers, you typically want to double system requirements. So I want to put this through a real test, 4 recorders (2 hd, 2 cable analog), and say 2-3 extenders (hd). Will this totally bog down the atom processor? Ram would be 2gb.

I believe several have tried. It should be okay as long as you use full clients or extenders and using hardware encoders for the analog capture. The biggest limitations will be the single PCI slots that most have, and the lack of SATA ports for hard drive expansion.

[ttiell]

thanks,

I have seen one that had two pci's and one pci-e. I've been a fan of hauppagge. The 1600 uses pci. how do I tell if it has hardware encoders?

thanks for the reply

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by ttiell

thanks,

I have seen one that had two pci's and one pci-e. I've been a fan of hauppagge. The 1600 uses pci. how do I tell if it has hardware encoders?

thanks for the reply

The HVR-1600 has one analog tuner with a hardware encoder, and one digital tuner (no encoder needed- it's already digital). The HVR-1600, 1800 and 2250 all have hardware mpeg2 encoders for analog TV.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by ttiell

thanks,

I have seen one that had two pci's and one pci-e. I've been a fan of hauppagge. The 1600 uses pci. how do I tell if it has hardware encoders?

thanks for the reply

it is really the "cheap" tuners that won't have a hardware mpeg2 encoder that will cause problems. If you go with the Sage recommended tuners, then you won't use any software encoders.

I should also mention that comskip will be rather limited with a setup of an atom processor. You certainly couldn't do realtime processing (you would actually want to probably turn off comskip during "peak viewing hours"). Just don't expect the world from it I guess.

Oh and one other limitation, do they have any with gigabit ethernet built in? With only 100mb ethernet, you could run into a network bottleneck pretty quickly (especially if you end up using an HDHomerun)

[ttiell]

Thank you for your help, I feel satisfied with this answer. Unless someone else is currently running an atom processor and can give their personal experience.