Mini ITX based HTPC for Campervan! (1 Viewer)

[Neville]

Hi
Has anyone any thoughts on my unique problem...

MP at home rocks but I am keen on taking movies recorded at home with me on holiday and having the ability to view live TV. The latter is 720i Satellite TV and the recorded is h.264 here in NZ
I need a low power and small form factor PC
I need it to be reasonably cheap

I have a copy of XP Home and planned on using that. Storage would be a portable USB drive from home as needed

Sat TV decoders seem to be best as internal cards as USB models I have found need external power supply etc so will be clumsy

I had been thinking therefore of dual core atom with integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 ( mini ITX ICH7 945GC) with internal TV card and 32 GB SS drive (speed and power). As the van's radio has a DVD player I was not going to bother with this. sound will be through the radio speaker system.

I planned a small Widescreen LCD ? 17- 19 inch or so.

The concern with set up is that the graphics will not manage to decode the h.264 files ...

I see others have recommend the Zotac Ion boards but I believe these will not have an internal card slot....

I have to get this right otherwise will have severe WAF issues!

Thanks in advance for any help

Neville

 

[etheesdad]

conventionally mITX boards have up to one expansion slot.

ION is a reasonable platform for h.264 encoding.

Yes you can get them with a single pci-e slot

the GMA950 would be a waste of time and money for HD playback IMHO.

If you are concerned about using an atom, consider a mITX with a cpu socket.

 

[Neville]

Thanks for that Jim
I was keen on the power saving of the Atom and the Nvidia zotac boards have good reviews and Redevil has had success with HD playback but his has no slot for the Sat TV
I will check out the website and continue to update as I make progress
Regards
Neville

 

[finrudd341]

I stumbled across this thread, after having made a joke about Dutch people and their caravan homes, so here goes for a real post.

The interesting thing about one of the Zotac boards is that it comes with a mini-pci slot. There are plenty of mini-pci 3g and GSM adapters, and even some dvb-t mini-pci cards, so given the small size, and the low power consumption, these seemed like excellent boards for mobile options like campervans. I could imagine making a model wired into an external antenna, and with the option to plug in a portable HDD with the media on, and it would make a pretty good device....to fill those long bleak evenings...with the cold and rain outside....

Edit - the Long Bleak Evenings, With the Cold & Rain Outside, was for the Dutch.

You NZ's in your camper vans have long bleak evenings with Hobbits and stuff outside I imagine..