Sponsored By
Efika 5200B Project
Very low power and low cost HDTV capable DVB set-top boxin category Other
proposed by beelze on 27th February 2006 (accepted on 20th March 2006)
Project Summary
Project aims at creation of a multi functional set-top box for DVB broadcasts via satellite, cable or terrestrial.Box should record and play HDTV streams via a hardware decoder board e.g. Realmagic DXR6.
There are both software and hardware aspects to consider.
Hardware components:
1. Low power requirements (using PicoPSU-120 and Notebook Power Suppy for highest efficency)
2. Low space requirements. Custom made housing
3. DVB-S, DVB-S2, DVB-C or DVB-T full featured or budget card
4. integrated card reader for digital photo viewing
5. touch panel or graph lcd at front for channel information and user interface
6. integrated bluetooth and infrared for remote control
7. DVD playback (adding a slim dvd device to the 2.5\" disk via a hardware mod to the 44 Pin connector)
8. maybe DVD or HD-DVD burner to record broadcasts
9. networked for access to media-file servers
Software components:
1. minimized linux distro for fast boot
2. patched VDR as application frontend (OSD, MP3 playback, recording, timers and so on. VDR is a very mature application with hundreds of plugins and even more features)
3. vdradmin or xxv as webfrontends to program and control the set-top box via network/internet
4. Menu software for controlling all functions of the system via the touch-panel/graph-lcd and front buttons/remote control
The EFIKA Board is just great for this project. It\'s low power requirements and small form factor are ideally suited for a set-top box. The cpu intesive task of decoding the HDTV streams is outsourced to a specialized DSP on an addon card so the PPC CPU should be hardly stressed.
In combination with a notebook power brick and the PicoPsu which has an efficiency of 96% the power consumption of the whole system should be lower than any similiar product on current market.
Project Blog Entries
According to genesi the shipping of efika boards will start in November.
I'm currently trying to get my hands on a HDTV capable DVB Card.
Multiple products are already on the market. If the efika arrives before I get the card I'll build the prototype around a standard DVB Card and add the HDTV one later.