VIA makes few very small mother intended for embedded multi-media systems. These motherboards in the VIA EPIA line are based on the C3 line of chips, and their successor. The C3 chip was previously known as the Cyrix Pentium III (compatible) chip. These motherboards have been known to be great starting points for building MythTV front ends.
Although the CPUs are generally slow and outdated by today's standards, VIA motherboards offer a few features of interest to MythTV users.
One of the advantages of utilizing an older slower CPU is lower power consumption. Since MythTV systems are usually powered on all the time, some users are interested in reducing the power consumption, associated power bill, and impact on the environment. It's possible to build a system that runs from a 60W external DC power supply (power brick.)
VIA actually has designed some of the models with “embedded” multimedia systems in mind. They include TV-out right from the motherboard, as well as a MPEG2 Decoding chip.
The TV-out allows you to connect the system directly to a TV without any additional hardware. This is valuable from both a initial cash outlay point of view as well as power consumption. Why power an additional video card if you don't have to?
The MPEG2 decoder chips allow the processing of full screen video without taxing the CPU. For standard definition television streams, the VIA system with 600Mhz CPU can process and display full screen video quite well.
More importantly to some people, the ME6000 and SP8000E may be the only consumer level products available that can display MythTV MPEG2 streams in complete silence. Both have passively cooled CPUs, meaning a heat sink but no fan. The ME6000 has a 600Mhz CPU that plays standard definition video well, while the SP8000E has an 800Mhz CPU and can handle HDTV. These are the only systems I know of that can do full screen MythTV video while not requiring a CPU heat sink fan. If true silence is important to you, these may be your only option other than placing your MythTV frontend (and backend) in another room and running long wires. It's important to realize that any MythTV features that are not MPEG2 playback will run at the (slow) speed of the CPU.
These systems make especially good MythTV frontends. Using the MiniMyth MythTV Distribution, these systems can boot over the network or off a flash card in complete silence when coupled with a case that supports an external DC power supply.
