New Server Hardware Recommendations?

[Michael Torrie]

Levi Pearson wrote:
> I was just looking at that as a Myth frontend, too.  The NVidia chipset
> should support the new VDPAU interface to the hardware video codecs,
> which should allow smooth MPEG2 and H.264 decoding with minimal CPU
> usage.  Support for that is still beta in the NVidia driver and MythTV,
> but some people have got it working well.
> 
> The downsides for that box:
>   No HDMI port, so you won't get video+audio on the same cable, though
>   it comes with a DVI/HDMI adapter for video.

I believe that you can still do audio through HDMI.  NVidia tends to
pass audio through on a couple of pins on the DVI, which works so long
as you use their DVI->HDMI converter.  It's not a standard, so don't
expect any DVI->HDMI converter to work.

Granted I have never actually used this functionality, but I know it's
there.  I have a GeForce 9500 card that has this functionality (It's a
dual-dvi card), provided you pipe audio in using a little cable from a
special sound card jack to the video card and buy Nvidia's HDMI adapter.