[Cube] G4 Cube as HTPC or media machine?

[Philip J Robar]

On Dec 28, 2005, at 9:37 PM, Scott Strungis wrote:

> I am trying to evaluate the suitability of my Cube as an HTPC.   
> It's in
> the living room now and is being used for DVDs, CDs, iTunes, MAME,  
> DLed TV
> shows, and light websurfing.  It's connected to my set with a  
> converter
> box that goes from VGA to Component.
>
> When it comes to DLed TV shows, I can manage lo-res stuff, but any  
> Hi-Def
> streams that I grab up can't be played full speed with VLC, Xine, or
> MPlayer.
>
> This is a stock Cube with 512 megs of RAM and a Geforce2 card.
>
> Has anyone tried any sort of DVR work with their Cube?

EyeTV (http://www.elgato.com) has several solutions.

As far as HD you're out of luck with even with the fastest upgrade  
you can buy for your cube. The problem is that even on G5's Apple and  
the graphics card makers haven't exposed the hardware that would  
assist with decoding HD so HD decoding on all Macs is software only  
and therefore depends on raw CPU power. Even G5s strain to decode HD  
content. My Powerbook 1.33 GHz G4 can't decode even 480P smoothly.

One solution is to record HD on the Mac and ship it to a standalone  
media box for playback. See http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/ 
eyetv500.php for more on this. Other reviews of Elgato stuff are  
readily available on the net.

The real answer for HDTV recording and playback is your cable  
company's PVR. Comcasts Motorola box isn't a TiVo yet, but it doesn't  
suck either.


Phil