[mythtv-users] Speed and Hardware MPEG card choice

[papenfuss at juneau.me.vt.edu]

	Hello all.  I'm currently arguing with a dual OC'd Celeron 300->450
moldy old machine for my mythtv box.  I was hoping that the dual CPU would make
it useable enough for mythtv, but it's awfully marginal.  Recording with RTJPEG
(170 quality) at 352x480 takes about 90-95% of the CPU, and playing at the same
time takes most of the other:

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME CPU COMMAND
 2994 root       9   0 46656  37M  7396 R    92.9  9.9   1:29   1 mythbackend
 3281 mythtv     9   0 33984  33M 18868 S    39.5  8.8   0:34   1 mythfrontend
 3137 root      11   0  279M  22M 12420 S    29.4  6.0   2:47   1 X


	SO, rather than spend money on a new machine, I figure I can get more
utility out of a hardware MPEG card.  I thought the choice was simple
(PVR-250), but now with the AverMedia M179 card, I'm not so sure.  With the
newest patch for ivtv supposedly supporting sound, it seems a lot more
interesting.  Also, since AverMedia is somewhat supportive of the open source
crowd (provided some hardware specs), I'd prefer to support them.  It doesn't
have a remote or input for one like the hauppauge, right?  How about
composite/svideo in in addition to the tuner?  Looks like it might but the
specs on the avermedia homepage are a bit vague, saying "input is - 75 Ohm
Coaxial TV Antenna".  I don't want it if I can't record from a digital cable
box or VHS tape.

	Does this seem like a reasonable setup?  Will offloading the encoding 
to the vid card make the dually celeron a bit more snappy on the channel 
changing, etc?

Thanks for any advice,

-Cory

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