ASUS EeeBox

[Jarod Wilson]

On Tue, 2008-09-23 at 20:51 -0400, Tom Metro wrote:
> Looks like ASUS has followed up its Eee PC small laptop with a small, 
> low-power desktop machine:
> 
> http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SkuSearch_v2.asp?SCriteria=BA25422
> 
> Currently selling for $340 with no display. It's powered by a 1.6 GHz 
> Intel Atom n270 with 1 GB RAM, 80 GB hdd, 802.11b/g/n wireless (and Gb 
> LAN), and is loaded with Windows XP home. They claim it uses only 20W of 
> power and makes 26dB of noise. Small enough that you can bolt it to the 
> back of an LCD.
> 
> The CPU is probably too weak to make a good MythTV front-end (at least 
> not for HD),

You'd be surprised just how little cpu you can get away with and still
play back HDTV material these days:

1) The 1GHz Intel Pentium-M-derivative proc in the AppleTV paired with
its nVidia graphics chip can *almost* reliably play back 1080i material,
and does fine with 720p. And my current issue with 1080i isn't an
overloaded cpu, its audio drop-outs while using XvMC video decode.

2) The 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 (yes, same proc as the eeebox) in my Acer
Aspire One, paired with onboard intel graphics with only 8MB of ram
allocated for video can play back 720p material just fine. I don't think
I've tried any 1080i stuff yet, but that's on my todo list, especially
now that MythTV is building against rawhide again...

--jarod, typing this on his AAO