What hardware are you using for OM?

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Originally Posted by jpmack

I agree with you on louder and more powerful speakers not being the thing at this point in my life, hence i only am running a 8" 500watt sub. However i went with the better door speakers for the purpose of surround sound on movies. My kids love it when they can play a movie in the car, they prefer it over watching one in the house, it sounds so much better in the car...lol!



Well the way I have my setup is, I am running 2 zones. Zone 1 (Main screen through onboard HDMI) is setup up for driver/front passanger. This is completely independent from zone 2 (4 rear headrest monitors). Zone 2 has its own audio(usb addon audio device) and video(on board vga to rca conversion). I know that OM Dev's are currently in the process implementing a multi-input backend into the software that will allow for easy setup of multiple mice and keyboards to be setup for each zone!

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I agree with jpmack..... All you really need are 2 display ports. One would be for the front and one for the rear. The more zones you want, the more hardware that is required.

What JP has done is used one display port for front, then split the second display port to work with 2 screens. Basically what that is called is Dual Zone. Its also very similar to my installs main system, except I am splitting the rear display port between seven screens.

OMG JP, that would be awesome about the keyboard support!

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Originally Posted by jmullan99

When you say on-board vga -> RCA, does this mean your board supports the HDMI + VGA concurrently as two seperate displays?

I'm already impressed with the zoning so far. I fired up OM at work here, with laptop + external monitor and BAM it automatically set itself for two zones. Awesome.

John

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Most boards support dual display outputs.....

PS: JPMack....... As far as the keyboard thing, are they also working on skinning. That is my number one issue with OM. Also the large amounts of plugins I need, but thats another issue I dont need to worry about right now. The skinning is my #1 problem.

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Originally Posted by jmullan99

When you say on-board vga -> RCA, does this mean your board supports the HDMI + VGA concurrently as two seperate displays?

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Yes, on-board VGA and on-board HDMI are setup as two seperate displays(Zones).

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Originally Posted by jpmack

Yes, on-board VGA and on-board HDMI are setup as two seperate displays(Zones).

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Hmmm this narrows down my choices some. I am hoping to get away with non-touchscreen headrest displays that actually only have composite input. This would mean using the one PCI slot for a capable video card. That means removing my wifi card.

I've been looking through some Zotac stuff, and there are some Atom 330 (dual core) boards that include mini-PCI wifi. Have not seen any with composite output, but that's the price of staying in the stone-age I guess. Actually, while I can stretch out and wait to gathering everything, I am trying to do this on a budget.

I can get two headrest monitors, two wireless headphones, for $200, a video card for $40. That's kinda in my budget plan. Easy enough to add USB keyboards, mice and sound.

Am I asking for trouble with my budget plan as it's developing?

John

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Originally Posted by jmullan99

Hmmm this narrows down my choices some. I am hoping to get away with non-touchscreen headrest displays that actually only have composite input. This would mean using the one PCI slot for a capable video card. That means removing my wifi card.

I've been looking through some Zotac stuff, and there are some Atom 330 (dual core) boards that include mini-PCI wifi. Have not seen any with composite output, but that's the price of staying in the stone-age I guess. Actually, while I can stretch out and wait to gathering everything, I am trying to do this on a budget.

I can get two headrest monitors, two wireless headphones, for $200, a video card for $40. That's kinda in my budget plan. Easy enough to add USB keyboards, mice and sound.

Am I asking for trouble with my budget plan as it's developing?

John

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Well you may find this of interest:

http://sewelldirect.com/pc-to-tv.asp

This is the exact device I use to get my onboard VGA to my 4 composite headrest! It actually does a fairly descent job for the price!

The Zotac board i use has the dual-core atom processor and two mini-pci slots on-board, the one is used by a mini-pci wifi and the other is still not being used!

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Originally Posted by jpmack

Well you may find this of interest:

http://sewelldirect.com/pc-to-tv.asp

This is the exact device I use to get my onboard VGA to my 4 composite headrest! It actually does a fairly descent job for the price!

The Zotac board i use has the dual-core atom processor and two mini-pci slots on-board, the one is used by a mini-pci wifi and the other is still not being used!

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I agree with JPmack..... just use a converter to convert your VGA or even your HDMI to composite. The only difference is that font will be blurry sometimes if small. For movie and video use it should be awesome.

That converter looks like it would do the job. One VGA port for the in-dash unit, the other (via DVI -> VGA adapter) for the converter. Or vice-versa.

Another thing. I know that the use of more than 1 CPU is typically application dependent. Does OM split chores (threads) among CPUs? Just wondering what advantage I would expect.

My assumption is that OM does some magic. But essentially that two zones on two cores would run roughly the same as one zone on one core.

Just curiosity since I will end up with dual core atom anyway.

John

while i can't answer it on the OM level, i have seen windows 7 do some load leveling across multiple cores(my amd system, carpc, and some i7 pc's at work)

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Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

I agree with JPmack..... just use a converter to convert your VGA or even your HDMI to composite. The only difference is that font will be blurry sometimes if small. For movie and video use it should be awesome.

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Exactly what he said, the font is terrible so if you need to do alot of reading from text this won't be a good solution, however for videos and music it is great, just like hooking a dvd play to it through composite. And I know in OM the text is big enough in the interface that your passengers will still be able to read playlist, and things like that!

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Originally Posted by jmullan99

Another thing. I know that the use of more than 1 CPU is typically application dependent. Does OM split chores (threads) among CPUs? Just wondering what advantage I would expect.

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Hopefully one of the OM Dev's might jump in here because i unfortinetly can't answer this for you! If not i'll get an answer for you!

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Originally Posted by jmullan99

My assumption is that OM does some magic. But essentially that two zones on two cores would run roughly the same as one zone on one core.

Just curiosity since I will end up with dual core atom anyway.

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Well i can speak from my experiance with OM, i have no lag while running multi-zones. I am able to watch movies on both zones simultaneously without a hicup! And same with music, both zones don't have a problem pulling music from the same playlist and and playing music simultaneously.