[mythtv] Hardware configuration

[Bruce Markey]

John S Flowers wrote:
> As a follow-up to my original question. I asked, "What card supports 
> hardware MJPEG?" and someone suggested I look at the MythTV web site.
> 
> After checking the web site thoroughly, I find no mention of hardware 
> MJPEG support. Perhaps I am missing something or this e-mail (below) 
> suggests that hardware MJPEG support isn't available?
> 
> I guess I'm just asking the same question (and trying not to be too daft 
> about it), "Are there any cards that are known to offload MJPEG from the 
> CPU to a Tuner card?"

There isn't much info yet but look at "Documentation" (the
HOWTO) section 16.5 . Under "Here are some of the features in
version 0.8". Currently the last item is "* Increased hardware
encoder support. mythtv can now use the MJPEG encoder/decoder
found on Matrox G200 series cards. This greatly reduces the CPU
utilization."

I don't have one of these cards so I haven't tried it and I
don't know if there are any other cards that will be supported.
The Video Compression screen for 0.8 (CVS) has "RTjpeg",
"MPEG-4", and "Hardware MJPEG" When MJPEG is selected there
are settings for Quality and Decimation.

Of course, MJPEG files will be much larger than MPEG-4 files
at the same resolution so there is a trade off of CPU vs disk.
If fewer hours of record time for disk space is acceptable, I
imagine this should work with a sub-500MHz CPU. I believe that
if dollars per hour of record time is the only issue, a faster
CPU is currently the better investment.

Hope that helps,

--  bjm