[linux-dvb] Re: Minimum system

[Ralph Metzler <rjkm@convergence.de>]

Ralf Bauer writes:
 > Well, what you described is definitely a very nice system that everybody
 > would like to have, but there are also other aspects we should think about.
 > 
 > My VDR-PC consumes about 80W of electrical energy which sums up to 700 kWh/a
 > or about DM 250,- a year and 413 kg CO2. An additional PC would even double
 > those numbers.
 > 
 > We should also have a look at saving energy and reducing the annual cost of
 > such a system (you already guessed it, I'm Swabian).
 > 
 > If you don't use your VDR-PC also as FAX server, answering machine or
 > router, your machine will probably do nothing 90% of the time. It should be
 > pretty easy to automatically shutdown the system if it is not used to view
 > or record something. This would lower the standby power consumption to about
 > 1-5 W which is about DM 15,- a year.
 > 
 > It is a little bit more difficult to switch on the system for a timer
 > recording. PC98 compliant mainboards (I am not sure about earlier models)
 > support a wakeup on RTC, which means we could program the wakeup time of the
 > next timer event into the RTC and wakeup the VDR-PC just a minute before the
 > recording starts. I have not seen this support in Linux yet, but this should
 > be easily integrated in the "hwclock" command.
 > 
 > Shutting down the system also reduces the noise to the time when the VDR is
 > used.


If you wait another 6 or 9 months I am sure that enough set-top-boxes will 
appear on the market which will have all this built-in and will
consume less power.
One project of ours which already was publically announced is the Galaxis
set-top-box with AV72xx chipset.
I think these kinds of boxes will offer all you want in a DVB receiver
and also have enough power for other basic Linux applications.


Ralph



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