Media Player LT PC Specs / Micro Server use

[sami_rautio]

Has anyone been playing around with PB LT and small form factor PC´s? Would be an attractive option to buy a miniature PC with NVidia ION but that has only 512Mb video memory, but could it be enough to run that one video layer and some graphics?

[Christopher Fluegel]

Hi Sami,

we also had tried some of these miniature PCs but have not found any practicable, handy, affordable and powerful enough solution playing back at least one full HD mpg. I think that not the GPU is the problem, but the CPU.

[dalenvigil]

Has anybody tried using the player on 3rd party micro hardware like a Via ARTiGO?

Trying to put a media server onboard an actor and trigger content using wireless-DMX (Show Baby, w-dmx, etc). The problem is that I'm having a hard time finding an available media server that is both small enough in size, low power consumption. Since I'm currently using Pandora's Box in the entirety of the system, as well as in the current "mobile" system where we're transmitting video content from a separate Coolux server, I would like to continue using the software so that I don't have to purchase another software suite, reprogram the console, etc.

The hardware in our current video transmission system has been discontinued by the manufacturer, and touring throughout various locales I have been running into severe interference issues due to differing, or sometimes complete lack of regulation regarding the airwaves.



Dalen Vigil
Head of Lighting
Cirque du Soleil's Varekai

[Christopher Fluegel]

Hi Dalen,

I've moved your posting into this thread because it's nearly the same.

As I can say right now we found a small, affordable hardware solution and we are testing.....but it will take some time until we can say when it will be available.

Your example is very interesting and thank you for the hardware example! We tested a few different machines available on the market and of course PandorasBox is running and you can playback content but i can say from our tests that in most cases it's not possible to play back a fluid full HD 30fps video with that ultra small PCs.

So maybe these mini PCs are a solution for you if you not want to run full HD resolution and content.

[dalenvigil]

All of our content is original from creation 10 years ago so no 30fps HD stuff.

Right now it's transmitting over a system similar to remote CCTV transmitters. This is manageable, but certainly not ideal, and in countries where RF regulation is minimal, I get a TON of interference from everything from TV to radio to internet and even mall paging systems.

What hardware have you been looking at? I was considering the Artigo because of its form factor, low power consumption, and ability to use cheap flash storage instead of a traditional hard disk. However, if you have something in mind I'd like to take a look at it. My biggest concern is running the software on the system, and the potentially long start up times of an onboard server.

[Christopher Fluegel]

Hi,

we tested for example with the Zotac ZBOX equipped with Intel and nVidia hardware. These were one of the better ones and they were able to run PB and playout but not HD. There are some different versions out there. Most important thing with these ultra small PCs is a powerfull CPU.

This is what we can say from our side. The only thing you can do is to test yourself if these mini computers are suiting your needs because you definitly have some special (very interesting!) requirements for that hardware