Sleeping your frontend, for backend power saving

My backend shuts itself down and wakes up on demand. But.. external frontends combined with lazy people, this means the backend remains powered on -doing nothing- every now and then. So I went out to see if I could put the frontends to sleep while also stopping mythfrontend, enabling the backend to start its shutdown sequence. I sleep the machines running the frontends because there may be running browser sessions etc.

How to set it up:

Gnome Power Manager -which is used by Ubuntu- waits until the screensaver says the desktop is idle and then does its own countdown. So the total time until sleep, is the time until the screensaver comes up plus the time you set in Gnome Power Manager. btw, LiveTV automatically disables the screensaver so we have the covered. We won't accidentally stop someone viewing television.

You will need to setup the screensaver and Gnome Power Manager yourself.

Then create a file as root:

$ sudo nano -w /etc/pm/sleep.d/00_quit-mythfrontend

#!/bin/sh
#
# Kill mythfrontend

case "$1" in
    hibernate|suspend)
        killall mythfrontend.real
        killall mythfrontend
        sleep 5s
esac

Set it executable:

$ sudo chmod +x /etc/pm/sleep.d/00_quit-mythfrontend

Your frontend will now be stopped before the machine goes to sleep.

Tip: don't name it 99_kill-mythfrontend, then the network will be down before the frontend has finished its exit ceremony.

Looking for another tuner for MythTV

I'm looking for a USB or PCIe DVB-C tuner with CI (CAM) slot. My second PCI slot is covered by the GPU heatsink.

Options I've found:
* NetUP Dual DVB-T/C-CI (PCIe) - This is a "professional" card, I've seen mentioned that it apparently costs over €900.
* Digital Devices DuoFlex C&T (PCIe) - Promising, but only their S2 device appears to be supported under Linux. CI slot only partially.
* Terratec H7 (USB2.0) - Not supported under Linux, or only without the CI slot.

Further question: Can the Alphacrypt Classic decrypt two Irdeto2 transports simultaneously, coming from a dual tuner?

I will probably edit this post a bit when other devices come up.

Installing the Zotac ND22

Spent most of my time installing Windows, first for a BIOS update. Later for an Android firmware update (Sony-Ericsson Xperia X8) that can only run from Windows. Anyways, XP does not support USB of the ND22 during the initial setup, you can possibly get around this by disabling 'Legacy USB support' in the BIOS. Didn't try that, hopped to Vista and that worked. Took about 2 days to install all patches though. Then it took more than 30 minutes for Sony Ericsson to install their USB cable driver, but that's another story..

Installing MythBuntu was a breeze. Setup date/time and account settings, the partitioning scheme and off it went. I didn't start with a MythBuntu backend, so the connection the backend didn't work out from the start. But after copying the appropriate mysql.txt line from another frontend it worked fine. Also updated to nvidia-current just in case, it's in ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates. Apparently they fixed some VDPAU decoding problems there, which is nice.

It now runs the Ubuntu Netbook desktop and it works pretty sweet. Also installed Flash 10.2 for YouTube support, and Dropbox to sync files to and from the old Mac Mini. Flash crashes a lot though, about every new video you click in firefox gives a crashed plugin..

Getting the Airport Extreme/Express combos to properly sync at a high speed was another story, and involved using my iPhone to look for the place with the strongest signal. I'm still not quite happy with the setup, but it appears to work now with 2 access points on the same SSID.

Well, that's it.

Bought some stuff

Spent some money on the previously mentioned projects.

• Zotac ZBOX HDND22 - with Intel Celeron SU2300


• Kingston ValueRAM SODIMM DDR3-1066 4GB


• Airport Extreme - dual band 802.11n & 1gbit ethernet


• 8 port TP-link 1gbit switch

Total: € 427,84

I've still got a SATA laptop harddrive and ethernet cables in store, so no need to get those. Be sure to note that the SU2300 ZBOX takes DDR3 SODIMM, while the Atom ZBOXs take DDR2.

Next project after installation will be an additional tuner for the MythTV backend.

XBMC - on Apple TV 2

Was informed that a jailbroken Apple TV 2 can run XBMC with MythBox add on. So I tried it on my MacBook first, wasn't quite charmed, for example recording playback didn't work without mounting over NFS/SMB/AFS. It also lists only the most recent 10 recordings, Tried it my iPhone 4 next, and couldn't type on the tiny on screen keyboard drawn by XBMC/iOS.

Ah, well at least it was a neat idea.

Found one contender & other options

The Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11. It's cheap, small, has Nvidia ION2, basically a 9400M with improved VDPAU decoding (no unplayable video dimension gaps).

But I'm really not enamored with the Atom. On it's own the Atom barely enough to play h.264 at 360p. So you are basically counting on that Adobe gets and keeps its VDPAU support working in Flash, Youtube will not move WebM, and to a lesser extent that MythTV will not drop h.264 VDPAU support (they've already dropped some MPEG2 decoders).

Also, the ZBOX's are noisy. Measured about 50dBA closeby, when playing 1080p.

Another option would be to build a full blown >3GHz PC plus a low profile fanless Nvidia GPU with VDPAU 'featureset C', these come in at about €70. But since a PCI-E slot is perpendicular to the motherboard, and an ATX power supply is about as big as a Mac Mini all in itself, this will need a lot more space for the computer. And then it may not even be silent.

Choices, choices..

Edit: Discussed the options, and the slightly faster ZBOX with SU2300 is more appropriate than a lot bigger & more expensive PC.

MythFrontend for (much) less than €550

Proposed to replace the elderly Mac Mini G4 1.25GHz which I tried to use a a frontend -but doesn't quite cope with that- with a new Nvidia based intel Mac Mini (Late/Early 2009 & Mid 2010), summa €550 second hand, €660 new. Was shot down as 'too expensive'.

So I'm now looking for a PC (Linux, maybe Windows) in about the same space as a Mac Mini, for (much) less than €550.

Specs:
* Hardware decoding: Nvidia VDPAU
* -or- Mini PCI Express for Crystal HD
* Ethernet (to Airport Express) -or- 802.11n
* Silent (less than ?? dBA)
* Small
* 512+ MB RAM
* Any harddrive

At the moment I have no idea where to get a CrystalHD in The Netherlands. Probably source it on eBay from elsewhere.

Edit: Found an Early 2009 Mac Mini for €425. Might be a possibility, still looking further.