Hello Everyone …
I used to post frequently over at the now defunct HTPCNews site, under the handle jmhill1976. I’m finally getting around to renewing my HTPC project. I’ve been away from the ‘HTPC scene’ for a while, and I have a couple of questions I was hoping you guys could help me out with.
First question, is using an ATOM 330/ION really viable for a front-end HTPC?
I don’t plan on doing any gaming on this system, but Blu-Ray playback and HD Recording are definite musts for me. I’m married to DirecTV for the inalienable fact that I am an NFL junkie, so I plan on using a pair of HD PVRs to record content from my DirecTV installation. I’m pretty sure the HD PVRs will work fine with an Atom, since the devices themselves do all of the HD encoding and the HTPC merely pulls the stream from the devices.
The only thing I’d really like in terms of transcoding is the commercial-skip feature. Can an Atom 330 handle that adequately?
Other than that, I have an HD-Homerun, which I’ve used very sparingly. I plan on attaching a pair of HDTV antennae for purposes of recording local television. I suppose I can dig around in the Silicon Dust forums for the answer to this, but will two HDTV streams from the HD-Homerun stress the capacity of the Atom 330 beyond acceptable?
I also plan on storing the content on an Openfiler server, and am planning on using iSCSI targets over GBe for that.
So, given these considerations, would it be wise to move to a more powerful platform? Relatively silent operation is required for WAF – I don’t really relish the acoustical prospect of sitting in a windtunnel, nor the complaints that will emanate from the wife due to said effect. 🙂 I know there are ways to silence a PC running a more powerful chip, but it would definitely be preferable from a cost perspective to go with a less powered setup.
Thanks for your input! 🙂
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