Author Topic: Thin clients? Specs?  (Read 11908 times)

skeptic

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #15 on: November 11, 2008, 08:31:20 pm »
Typically wireless = pcmcia internally, needing the pci to pcmcia bridge setup before it can be used.  I.e. - no way to boot.  Supposedly there exists a few PCI wireless cards that actually can do PXE booting.  No idea what it would take as far as wap setup, but at a minimum you'd need one of these cards and no wifi security.  Even then I have doubts.  Better off using a wireless bridge and your ethernet port.

However, if someone does track down a wireless PCI NIC and gets it to work reliably a lot of people here would be interested.

totallymaxed

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #16 on: November 12, 2008, 07:26:43 am »

The ASUS Eee Box is a great MD but will need some manual config changes when adding it to a 'standard' LinuxMCE-0710 Core as Niz23 says earlier in the thread. We will put up a Wiki page (or add to the one Niz23 refers to) based on our experience getting the Eee Box integrated.

The Eee Box is almost silent, will drive screens at 720p/1080p under UI2 + Overlay (UI2 + Alpha blending is not supported currently by the Intel graphics drivers) and performs very smoothly graphically. With its tiny form factor, included VESA mounting kit and its performance it is highly recommended indeed.

All the best

almost positive it won't do 1080p...

We have the Eee Box running at 1080p here... just set it in the AVwizard ;-)

Andrew

**The Eee Box NIC driver is not currently in the initramfs so you need to add it so theat pxe boot can happen. See other threads here about that.

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totallymaxed

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #17 on: November 12, 2008, 07:29:16 am »
Typically wireless = pcmcia internally, needing the pci to pcmcia bridge setup before it can be used.  I.e. - no way to boot.  Supposedly there exists a few PCI wireless cards that actually can do PXE booting.  No idea what it would take as far as wap setup, but at a minimum you'd need one of these cards and no wifi security.  Even then I have doubts.  Better off using a wireless bridge and your ethernet port.

However, if someone does track down a wireless PCI NIC and gets it to work reliably a lot of people here would be interested.

Just see Thom's post earlier in this thread and use a Wireless Bridge... not a complete solution but it works.

Andrew
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dlewis

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #18 on: November 12, 2008, 12:19:23 pm »

The ASUS Eee Box is a great MD but will need some manual config changes when adding it to a 'standard' LinuxMCE-0710 Core as Niz23 says earlier in the thread. We will put up a Wiki page (or add to the one Niz23 refers to) based on our experience getting the Eee Box integrated.

The Eee Box is almost silent, will drive screens at 720p/1080p under UI2 + Overlay (UI2 + Alpha blending is not supported currently by the Intel graphics drivers) and performs very smoothly graphically. With its tiny form factor, included VESA mounting kit and its performance it is highly recommended indeed.

All the best
almost positive it won't do 1080p...

We have the Eee Box running at 1080p here... just set it in the AVwizard ;-)

Andrew

**The Eee Box NIC driver is not currently in the initramfs so you need to add it so theat pxe boot can happen. See other threads here about that.




Drew, is this true 1080P? If so, please let us know how you set it up. Thanks!

-D

totallymaxed

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #19 on: November 12, 2008, 01:37:05 pm »

The ASUS Eee Box is a great MD but will need some manual config changes when adding it to a 'standard' LinuxMCE-0710 Core as Niz23 says earlier in the thread. We will put up a Wiki page (or add to the one Niz23 refers to) based on our experience getting the Eee Box integrated.

The Eee Box is almost silent, will drive screens at 720p/1080p under UI2 + Overlay (UI2 + Alpha blending is not supported currently by the Intel graphics drivers) and performs very smoothly graphically. With its tiny form factor, included VESA mounting kit and its performance it is highly recommended indeed.

All the best
almost positive it won't do 1080p...

We have the Eee Box running at 1080p here... just set it in the AVwizard ;-)

Andrew

**The Eee Box NIC driver is not currently in the initramfs so you need to add it so theat pxe boot can happen. See other threads here about that.




Drew, is this true 1080P? If so, please let us know how you set it up. Thanks!

-D

Setup is from the AVwizard as normal and yes its full 1080p (all our LCD/Plasma panels report it as such).

Andrew
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drjenk

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #20 on: November 14, 2008, 05:11:08 am »

and some emitters for the nearby A/V equipment...done....


This part confused me.  Doesn't AV equipment typically just receive IR, and not transmit? 

totallymaxed

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #21 on: November 14, 2008, 10:15:17 am »

and some emitters for the nearby A/V equipment...done....


This part confused me.  Doesn't AV equipment typically just receive IR, and not transmit? 

Thom was referring to IR emitters connected to your MD that would be used to emit IR commands to your various AV gear.

Andrew
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nosebreaker

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #22 on: November 14, 2008, 05:37:29 pm »
Excellent, sounds like I'll be getting a few of these then if they support 1080 HD, I was only planning on 720p but it is good to know they can to 1080!

niz23

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #23 on: November 14, 2008, 06:54:04 pm »
nosebreaker.
Excellent, sounds like I'll be getting a few of these then if they support 1080 HD, I was only planning on 720p but it is good to know they can to 1080!

Remember. We are talking about 1080P mpeg2. Forget h.264/mpeg4 formats in high def. This unit simply do not have enough cpu power for that.
(Above is the result of my tests with a EEEBox).

Totallymaxed. Correct me if I am wrong here.

/niz23

nosebreaker

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #24 on: November 14, 2008, 08:11:24 pm »
So can they do 720p h264/mpeg4?

totallymaxed

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #25 on: November 15, 2008, 09:06:10 am »
nosebreaker.
Excellent, sounds like I'll be getting a few of these then if they support 1080 HD, I was only planning on 720p but it is good to know they can to 1080!

Remember. We are talking about 1080P mpeg2. Forget h.264/mpeg4 formats in high def. This unit simply do not have enough cpu power for that.
(Above is the result of my tests with a EEEBox).

Totallymaxed. Correct me if I am wrong here.

/niz23

Hi Niz23/Nosebreaker,

Right lets clear this confusion up... there is the display resolutions like 720p & 1080p that are set in the AVwizard. The Eee Box supports both of these no problem in UI2 with Overlay. This is purely about what resolution/aspect ratio your screen is being driven at.

Then their is the question of what kind of video content you will be playing. Recorded TV, DVD's and other SD video will playback at 720p & 1080p resolutions on the Eee Box fine (ie this SD content gets upscaled to those resolutions). Then there is content that has been encoded as h.264/mpeg4 in say an MKV wrapper format... this type of content does not play well on the Eee Box with the current h.264 codec used by Xine. So if your wish is to playback this type of HD content then currently the Eee Box is not right for you (we are looking at some closed source binary codecs that might change this...and I will report back when we have some test results)

All the best

Andrew
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nosebreaker

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #26 on: November 17, 2008, 03:40:20 pm »
Thanks Andrew, that is what I was looking for.  Yes it will drive a 1920x1080 monitor or 720 monitor, but there isn't enough CPU power to render HD content from h264 format.

OldBob

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #27 on: November 29, 2008, 04:42:43 am »
I have purchased an Intel Atom Box with Svideo connection.   It appears that SVideo can not support 720p - can someone confirm this for me?

tschak909

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Re: Thin clients? Specs?
« Reply #28 on: November 29, 2008, 04:51:27 am »
quite correct.

-Thom