Lowest heat MPEG-2/4 device - which one?

[slayer]

Hi

I have just about got my PVR working, but I have some heat issues with the PVR-350, it just gets so hot, and I dont want to make it too noisy with fans. Besides, not to happy with my pvr-250/epia M10000 stability anyway...

so...wondering...

whats the best, supported, MPEG hardware codec card to use for GBPVR, that outputs the least heat? (Not to concerned about the TV-bit)

On separate scoring, one that saves/plays MPEG4 would be really good, and if it could play standard DIVX, that would get top marks...

What have people got out there thats works?
Slay

[slayer]

{bump}

Was this a dumb question, or did everyone just miss it?

I did see the spec on an (external) Lifeview TV Walker Ultra, I think it was, which claims to do true hardware MPEG4 encoding. Would MPEG4 encoding work on a Nehemiah M10K CPU, or would it still need a better CPU? Anyone with any experience of it?

cheers

[capone]

I've never seen anyone discuss it, so no one may have any data. I never heard of anyone saying their TV card got hot (only discussions of vid/cpu), so if your's is getting hot, you need to look at cooling in general.

[nkh]

My PVR-350 get's pretty hot too, so I put a Zalman ZM-NB47J heatsink on it. It works okay, but I also made sure it's in line of the fan in my case.

[slayer]

dont know about you guys, but I think PCs as PVRs are not so 'green', both in terms of heat and electricity. sub's GBPVR has a lot going for it in this respect, with its hibernate qualities. probably 80% of people here keep their PVRs on 24/7 - not because they want to but because they CAN. but lets face it, some of us have partners who dont appreciate the cooling properties of a silverstone case sitting under their telly throbbing like a subwoofer. i myself dont. still trying to get a efficient PVR set-up. any posts on thermal/power efficiency appreciated...

[capone]

I keep mine on 24/7, but because my MB is bad a suspend/wake (getting a new one...need thermal shutoff in bios). You're right it isn't super green, but you can do things like getting 3rd party apps to throttle the CPU when idle. I know I got a 10F temp drop just telling the recording HD to sleep when not in use.

Hard to say for sure, but I think the PVR adds about $10/mo to the util bill. That's about 2-3 rentals, (not including gas for the trips, if I didn't netflix), so it's an investment well made.

Well, after all the $$ I spent setting it up...but a real savings from there