Okay, so you have your monster HTPC with a super fast cpu, tons of memory, terabyte storage (raid), gigabit ethernet, hdmi, hd input, etc. Now you want to be able to play all that content on another hdtv in another room, but don't want to fork out another $1000+ on another HTPC. What do you do?

I'm wondering if it makes sense to stream high definition video from the monster HTPC to a less expensive client machine. Is everything in place for this to be feasible? I see a lot of hype about high definition streaming, but not many specifics. I would like to know:

What are the cpu and memory requirements for a streaming client handling 1080p? Are they significantly less than decoding video files?

Which thin clients have enough horse power to drive 1080p displays (vga, dvi, or hdmi) and have spdif audio output?

Do any thin clients have hardware acceleration that would help with divx, x264, or others?

Do you need gigabit ethernet to stream 1080p video and surround sound?

Do the streaming protocols even support surround sound?

Which software is good for this (vlc, gstreamer, mplayer, divx connected, others?)

What about game consoles like the xbox 360? Can they do this?

David

I'm experimenting with an appletv as a hd frontend. So far it does work for up to 1080i output, but it is a work in progress.

Okay, so you have your monster HTPC with a super fast cpu, tons of memory, terabyte storage (raid), gigabit ethernet, hdmi, hd input, etc. Now you want to be able to play all that content on another hdtv in another room, but don't want to fork out another $1000+ on another HTPC. What do you do?

The problem is that most of what makes your combined frontend/backend HTPC cost $1000 are the frontend display functions, not the backend recording and storage functions.

While it takes a pretty powerful general purpose PC to decode and display HD content, it's not that expensive to do with dedicated silicon - probably no more than $250. Think of it as an ATSC STB, minus the RF tuner and plus a network interface. Or as an HD-DVD player, minus the optical drive and plus a network interface.

I guess that manufacturers have just not seen enough of a market for networkable devices like this. I had hopes that the Roku HD1000 might be such a device, but that seems to have died on the vine. The newer game consoles certainly have enough horsepower, but only support their own protocols.

I use a ziova z500 as a sort of a myth frontend. It is a networked dvd player that supports a lot of formats. For my recordings I utilize mythtv's built in UPnP server, and for videos and music I browse samba shares and use twonkyvision's UPnP server which I also run on my master mythbackend. It only supports up to 1080i. There are other similar products out there. Ziova's latest are: http://ziova.com/products.php. I know the least the helios x5000 does 1080p. Also TViX - http://www.tvixbox.com/

They all should support surround (ac3, DTS, etc.). I know mine does.

You don't necessarily need gigabit to stream 1080p, depending on how well your fast ethernet network works and how much other network traffic you have. But it's probably a good idea if you are thinking about multiple simultaneous HD streams.

First, the OP is talking about frontend/backend and streaming, but does not specify any application being used.. Are you talking about MythTV, or something else? My experience has been that MythTV is the best app/structure for this.


I experimented with a few UPnP devices to work as a MythTV frontend, but I ended up returning them to the store. I had some problems with them not playing all my HD content (1080i material over a certain bit rate). But, the main show stopper for me was the lack of decent FF/REW/skip controls. Automatic commercial skipping is maybe the best thing about MythTV.. If that's not enabled, a good 30 second skip option is crucial. Without either of those available, it was unusable.


You can throw together a cheap Linux box as a frontend. If you're feeling adventurous, you can attempt to use things like: diskless operation with a network booting frontend, OpenChrom MPEG2 acceleration, or XvMC acceleration with NVidia. YMMV on the looks, cost, and reliability of the resulting frontend.


The route I ended up going was using a Mac Mini as my Myth frontend. It's not as cheap as other options, but it's very versatile, and simple to set up as a frontend (just install the app). On top of that, it has the Apple media apps, iPod/iTunes integration, etc.

First, the OP is talking about frontend/backend and streaming, but does not specify any application being used.. Are you talking about MythTV, or something else? My experience has been that MythTV is the best app/structure for this.


I experimented with a few UPnP devices to work as a MythTV frontend, but I ended up returning them to the store. I had some problems with them not playing all my HD content (1080i material over a certain bit rate). But, the main show stopper for me was the lack of decent FF/REW/skip controls. Automatic commercial skipping is maybe the best thing about MythTV.. If that's not enabled, a good 30 second skip option is crucial. Without either of those available, it was unusable.


You can throw together a cheap Linux box as a frontend. If you're feeling adventurous, you can attempt to use things like: diskless operation with a network booting frontend, OpenChrom MPEG2 acceleration, or XvMC acceleration with NVidia. YMMV on the looks, cost, and reliability of the resulting frontend.


The route I ended up going was using a Mac Mini as my Myth frontend. It's not as cheap as other options, but it's very versatile, and simple to set up as a frontend (just install the app). On top of that, it has the Apple media apps, iPod/iTunes integration, etc.

Yep, I do miss the automatic commercial skip in my non-myth UPnP frontend, but FF/RW and skip work well. I can direct seek or skip a predetermined amout of seconds at a time which work well enough. I haven't had any problems with any of my recordings....

The only real advantage over another mythbox is slightly lower price and configuration was plug and play. I happened to have this unit before I built my myth system...

The Xbox (old one, not the 360) can output HD and can be hacked to load XBMC, so wouldn't that be a super cheap alternative, like less than $100 for a used one?

The Xbox (old one, not the 360) can output HD and can be hacked to load XBMC, so wouldn't that be a super cheap alternative, like less than $100 for a used one?

I think the xbox with xbmc is only powerful enough to upconvert lower resolutions to 720p or 1080i, not play native 720p or 1080i reliably without jutter and dropped frames.

I highly doubt it can do 1080p at al unless you upgrade the processor (it's a PIII 733Mghz)

I haven't seen any mention in this thread of the newly announced Tivo HD product. The current SD products support streaming, so perhaps the HD will also support it by the end of the year. Or am I wrong about this?

To me the advantage of the TiVo is the nice human interface. Things like backing up after FF are great.

No 1080p but that shouldn't be an issue for most people.

I am the OP and what I have gathered so far is there is no less cpu required for streaming video than just playing it off a network drive. Also, the best price device will probably have hardware support for the desired codec. The closest thing out now sounds like the PS3, which has hardware support for H.264.

David

This might not be what you were looking for but my solution was to add more outputs to my beefy system (ie another PCI dual head VGA card) I then use the 4 VGA ouputs (2 agp, 2 pci) for 4 seperate mythtv frontends, i feed all 4 VGA's into a 4X8 matrix VGA switch. This in conjuntion with VGA over Cat5E distributes up to 4 seperate programs to 8 different LCD's with the ability to "hot swap" programs from one room to another.

My system is a dual core 3.4 system with all NVIDIA graphics boards with XVMC acceleration. It can handle playback of 4 720p streams with no issue. It can only get by with 2 1080i streams, but can play2 SD streams as well while doing so.

I ended up adding an extra $200-300 into my current HD playback machine to enable this as opposed to builing more HD plackback systems. A decent Matrix VGA switch with remote can be had on EBAY for under $150.