FreeBSD as a HTPC!

Thomas Donnelly tad1214 at aol.com
Fri Nov 28 06:36:09 PST 2008


Dieter wrote:
> 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 at 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?
>   
I have found that smb mounts have always worked great. You could spin up 
an install on a 8-16GB (fill in the blank of Solid State media) and smb 
mount in your fstab for a /media or I usually do it in ~htpcuser/media


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