Looking for a cheap, lightweight computer board for TV.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Hi,

I've always been a bit more interested in the high performance stuff, but I just heard about raspberry pi, an extremely minimal computer for USD$35, which uses HDMI for a monitor.

I'm thinking of my parents, who are pushing 80 and can't see very well, and who have minimal computing interests. They have a big screen TV so they can even see it. But the Raspberry Pi board isn't quite up to a normal web browser experience like YouTube, according to this: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=26852&p=242367&hilit=iceweasel#p242367

So what I am looking for is a similar idea that can handle regular web browsing (say firefox) and video ALA youtube and cnn, and which can handle something like XFCE's office apps.

What I'm after is a full featured browser like Firefox, maybe 2g RAM, enough power to run good streaming video with say a 1mbps Internet connection. I'm thinking of either putting the board behind the TV and using wireless keyboard and mouse, or maybe the commodore 64 approach of keyboard combined with computer. The key here is an hdmi video card.

Any recommendations for which processor/chip set to look for, or a specific board that works well with Linux?

Thanks.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Nobody?

Lupin_the_3rd · Apprentice Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Posts: 168

I'm using a Mac Mini on my living room tv. It runs OSX currently, but I'm planning to convert it to Linux. Basically all it does is run XBMC to stream videos from an NFS mount.

I like the Mac Mini hardware for a living room, because it's small and sleek, it doesn't look like a big clunky PC, but it's powerful enough for HD video playback @ 1080p, and for any casual computing tasks too. There's really nothing else on the market that packs that much power into such a tiny package. You can find older models on ebay for less than the price of a new one. In fact, I think they did away with the optical drive on the newest one, so you'll need a prior model w/ optical drive if you intend to install Linux. About the only thing that makes the Linux installation different from any other machine, is that the Mini uses intel EFI firmware instead of legacy PC-BIOS.

IMO the ARM processor stuff and also intel Atom just don't cut it for desktop needs or HD video, particularly if you intend to run 1920 x 1080 screen resolution.
_________________
Compaq XP1000 Alpha EV67 667Mhz w/ 2GB ECC
32bit PCI: ATI Radeon 9100 (DRI works!)
32bit PCI: Generic Firewire 400 card
64bit PCI: BCM5703 Gig-E (Compaq NC7771)
64bit PCI: Sil3124 SATA w/ mdadm RAID1 (pair of WD VelociRaptors)

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

I was eyeballing the mac mini as well, but I think it's a bit overkill for my parents. Personally I would like one of the pimped out ones with a couple 27" thunderbolt monitors, but my parents will be using a computer a minimal amount.

They aren't going to stream movies with it the way you're talking. They don't even use a mouse well, and Dad just uses the up and down arrows for the channel on the TV. They don't get file sharing, they barely get printing and email.

It will be difficult enough to have them change to a different HDMI input to get to the computer, and from there maybe email and news browsing.

The TV is 1080p, so whatever I get needs to be able to drive that size screen. It would be nice to get a decent (not fantastic) frame rate to that monitor, and "normal" web browsing behavior, but I think that's the heaviest requirement.

I've been googling single-board computers, but the problem is I'm not sure how fast any of this stuff is.

I will probably get a Raspberry Pi soon, that will at least give me a benchmark.

LoTeK · Apprentice Joined: 26 Jul 2012 Posts: 270

sorry that I'll post this link again: http://www.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.html but this should be a suitable computer and it's very cool

I mean opensource hardware !!!
I have one and you can watch youtube videos, and of course you can do all the text-edit office stuff etc without problems...

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

That mini pc might be interesting, but I can't find any prices and I'm thinking something a bit more elemental than that.

I'm looking for a single board computer, that ships without a case or power supply. Something that might normally be used as an embedded controller, or that you might build a super small PC around.

I'm also looking for digital DVI output. This is going to be driving a TV set. I do not want analog, so if it has a VGA as its sole video port it is not suitable.

Thanks.

_______0 · Guru Joined: 15 Oct 2012 Posts: 521

best place to get the right and precise answer would be xbmc and mythtv forums (if not reading their wikis for hardware builds).

There you'll get a system config for any scenario you could dream off. Prolly avs forums as well.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Thanks a bunch, I'll go check.

chithanh · Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 6:39 pm Post subject:

If you consider barebone systems too, you may want to look at the Zotac zbox nano series.

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 7:30 pm Post subject:

I wonder whether the Mini X would do the job?

Some of the mini PCs in this article have HDMI ports: Small low cost linux pc's, an overview from 11-2012.
_________________
Clevo W230SS: amd64, VIDEO_CARDS="intel modesetting nvidia".
Compal NBLB2: ~amd64, xf86-video-ati. Dual boot Win 7 Pro 64-bit.
OpenRC systemd-utils[udev] elogind KDE on both.
My blog

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Both of those have interesting options.

The Hackberry A10 seems viable, and while the Zotac stuff is bigger than I was asking for it looks really promising for some ideas I have.

Thanks, and keep them coming!