Crystal HD Decoder Boards
Broadcom BCM970012 and BCM970015 Crystal HD card boards can be installed in the Apple TV’s mini-PCIe slot as a replacement for the Broadcom BCM4321 wireless card. These boards enable OpenELEC to decode H.264 video content using a dedicated hardware decoder chip instead of software decoding H.264 using the main system CPU. The standard Apple TV box will handle software-decoding of SD and standard profile 720p content but the 1GHz CPU chokes on higher profile 720p and all 1080p content unless you spend many (many) hours painstakingly re-encoding videos with tools like Handbrake. Even then the CPU is typically running at 90-100% during playback and you can expect dropped frames and stuttering during fast panning shots. With a BCM970015 Crystal HD decoder card installed and decoding offloaded from the system CPU the Apple TV is capable of playing all but the most challenging of 1080p content with the system CPU load peaking around 45-50%. (continue reading…)