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PostPosted: Tue May 12, 2009 2:13 pm 
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Anandtech just published a review on the first mini-ITX Ion board. This is sort of a follow-up to my initial post on the Ion platform.

In case you missed it, this is an all-in-one (CPU/Video/MB) item that is capable of using VDPAU for HD-content playback for a cheap price. The initial reviews on the Ion platform indicate that it is a more power setup than the Intel offerings in this regard. Also, cesman build the atomic ant (tier 1 by the way) as a POC that this stuff works with mythtv and LinHES!

Review: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3562

Some advantages the Ion platform offers over the Intel board:
-Onboard 9300 (VDPAU!!) w/ native HDMI, DVI, and VGA out
-Silent option/totally passive cooling
-Higher quality cooling (monster heatsink from the factory)
-4 GB RAM Max (DDR2-800)
-Better audio out options: analog, optical or coaxial digital
-Six USB 2.0 ports
-Three SATA ports
-LOW power consumption/included 90 W DC power supply

Does anyone (cesman) know about Arch/LinHES compatibility with this new chipset? Will R6 likely support it out-of-the-box?

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Last edited by graysky on Sun May 17, 2009 4:41 am, edited 2 times in total.


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PostPosted: Tue May 12, 2009 3:30 pm 
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Impressive especially with idle power consumption on the Zotac running 25W!

C


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PostPosted: Tue May 12, 2009 4:49 pm 
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christ wrote:
Impressive especially with idle power consumption on the Zotac running 25W!


Think it's 14 W, no? Amazing nonetheless.

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PostPosted: Tue May 12, 2009 5:15 pm 
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graysky wrote:
Think it's 14 W, no?

That would be the Asus Eee Box with the 230 in it and I don't believe it has all the HTPC goodies such an Nvidia 9300.


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PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2009 4:35 am 
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Oops, 25 W is correct for the board/test system. That's about 1/3 of my current MBE's idle consumption (using athcool). Guess time will tell how LinHES-friendly this MB is going to be...

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PostPosted: Sat May 23, 2009 9:07 pm 
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It has actually worked out very well. I have the Zotac board from Newegg without the power supply. It says the video is a 9400m. I could not get it to start on R5.5 nor R6.00.07. However, it works great with R6.00.08. The sound was a little tricky for me to setup but vdpau rocks. Sorry i don't have a power meter or I would give you some real life power usage. I do have both the Zotac Ion board and the Intel D945GCLF board. The Ion board works much better in my opinion.


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PostPosted: Sun May 24, 2009 3:12 am 
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penguinpwr wrote:
The sound was a little tricky for me to setup but vdpau rocks.


Great news, thanks for replying. I'm very interested in the Atom 330 version of this board not currently offered at NewEgg. A few questions:

1) Is this the board you're talking about (ZOTAC IONITX-B-E Intel Atom N230 1.6GHz NVIDIA ION Mini ITX ION Platform Motherboard/CPU Combo - Retail)?
2) Did you select 'atomic ant' from the 'special hardware' menu for this board when installing R6.00.08, or did it just work?
3) Can you describe your box's hardware (i.e. which video capture are you using, which remote, etc.?
4) Can you describe how are you're connected to your TV's video, HDMI, VGA, etc. and how are you connected to your TV's audio?
5) Can you describe what you did to fix your sound?

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PostPosted: Sun May 24, 2009 8:27 am 
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I bought the motherboard because it looked like a fun project. I really don't have a use for it. The wife unit says i have a computer problem. I don't see the problem. The motherboard is an Zotac IONITX-B-E. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813500029 I have it in a old shuttle SV-24 case. I installed 2 gig of memory and have a SATA DVD burner and a 80 gig hard drive on it. It is connected to my spare 19" flat panel at 1440 x 900 using VGA. I am also using analog audio out. There is no capture device on it at this time.

I did a full R6.00.08 install. My main Myth box is on R5.5. I was afraid to try and front end a R6 to a R5.5. Certain things the wife will not forgive. Messing up her Myth box is one of them. I did not try the Atomic Ant flavor. I may go back and try it.

I only got the motherboard Friday night so I still have a lot more to play with. I will try the surround sound and the TV today and post back.

The sound was really no big deal. I was trying to fix Alsa and learn Arch at the same time. So the learning curve was slow. The first issue was there is only 3 jacks on the board so Alsa only provided stereo. I wanted 5.1. Add the line "options sda-hda-intel model=3stack-6ch-dig" in the "/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base" file. Then run the alsamixer. Go all the way to the right and look for "<Channel>". Change if from "2ch" to "6ch". I also had to crank up all the analog outputs to 100%. I then added an "asound.conf" file in the "/etc" directory.
pcm.!default {
type route
slave.pcm surround51
slave.channels 6
ttable.0.0 1
ttable.1.1 1
ttable.2.2 1
ttable.3.3 1
ttable.4.4 1
ttable.5.5 1
}
That was it. There has to be a better way to do the "asound.conf" file but I had it working at this point and then lost interest in it. This will be something I will revisit in the future.

Vdpau is what amazed me. I pushed three shows over to it. The one was 1080i raw capture, the second was 853 x 480 in h264, the third was 624 x 352 in xvid. I installed the mythtv-vdpau using pacman just like Cecil said to on flyspray. The 1080i used 82% without vdpau and then went down to 10% using vdpau. I had to go back and forth several times just to verify it. The 853 x 480 h264 went from 50% to 6% - 35%. It varied a lot. I'm not real sure why it varied so much. The 624 x 360 xvid went from 12% to 19%. I think this is because there is no vdpau xvid codec. The mplayer command line I used was "mplayer-resumer.pl -fs -zoom -vo vdpau -vc ffmpeg12vdpau,ffh264vdpau,xvid %s".

All the shows looked good on the monitor. There was no stuttering, streaking, lines or tearing that I noticed. This is something I will really pay attention to on the big TV today.


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PostPosted: Mon May 25, 2009 8:14 pm 
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Just a quick update for anyone who might care. I connected the DVI out on the motherboard to the HDMI in on the TV. I run the 5.1 analog speakers straight to the motherboard. The h264 and XviD looked great and worked well. The 1080i raw capture I was using had some tearing but only during fast action dark scenes. If I did not use vdpau, the picture looked great. So I have some work to do. If I find a fix, I'll post back.


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PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 3:49 pm 
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Tearing w/ VDPAU? Interesting.

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PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 6:25 pm 
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Looks interesting. Noting your tearing issue, are you using Nvidia driver 180.51?


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PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 8:25 pm 
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Yes, I am using the Nvidia 180.51 drivers. Would the Power Miser effect this? I did notice it drops from 450 Mhz to 200 Mhz on the GPU. That just doesn't seem right.


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PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 9:22 pm 
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penguinpwr wrote:
Would the Power Miser effect this? I did notice it drops from 450 Mhz to 200 Mhz on the GPU. That just doesn't seem right.

I don't know but your hypothesis is worth pursuing.
C


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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2009 8:37 am 
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OK, it was not the power miser. It was actually really simple. I just took the long route. You have to add a section in your xorg.conf file.

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disabled"
EndSection

That was it. Now it plays all the dark horror movies at 1080i with no tearing. Thanks to the Ubuntu forums and a TJC post in Knoppmyth.

I also played a few DVDs through it. On the standard "Internal" player it used 25% CPU. Using mplayer with VDPAU it used 6% CPU. There was no tearing and no issues that I noticed.

I will receive a USB ATSC tuner and HDMI cable on Monday. I have to know if it will capture and watch HD. I'll post back on how it does.

The more I play with this board the more I like it. I have the bios set at the standard optimal settings. There is no other tweaking. The default video setting is 256MB but it can be changed to 512MB. I left it at 256MB. R6.00.08 loaded with no issues. A few minor tweaks and it is ready to play HD.


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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2009 1:27 pm 
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Very sweet. Did you explore any other case options? With the right case that and a HDHomerun would make a nice mini system for a buddy of mine with a GF who is picky about "clutter" in the living room.

(Why useful AV components are "clutter" and all the utterly useless dust catching "decorating" crap isn't, is one of those mysteries of the female mind. ;-))


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