All,

I just picked up a little fanless box PC with an Intel Celeron-M 600 (512MB RAM, but can increase if necessary). This has the Intel integrated 852GM (same family as 855) chipset and graphics, with 32MB RAM shared in BIOS for the video. I'm currently working on trying to set this up purely as a frontend.

I currently have the backend working, and the frontend is displaying to VGA (I don't have TV-out set up yet).

When I stream Live TV from the backend, it plays fairly well. When I try to play recorded content, though, it's extremely choppy. Is there anything I can do to improve the playback?

It's a tiny self-contained box (about Mac-mini size), so I can't add a new video card. I can increase RAM to 1G if necessary. But I don't know if it's RAM that's causing the problem, or the XF86 settings for the Intel chipset.

FYI, I've installed nothing but KnoppMyth R5D1, and ran the FrontendOnlyInstall instructions (http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page ... nlyInstall). So if I need to install newer drivers from Intel, let me know.

Are you de-interlacing playback?

If you are curious as to whether it is the ram or the cpu, run top while you are watching a recording. If your cpu is reaching anything over 80% or so then it is probably underpowered.

How choppy is choppy playback? How about the audio?