[mythtv-users] New User System Setup Questions
Cedar McKay
cedarmckay at mac.com
Thu Feb 20 07:30:16 UTC 2003
>
> 1. I currently use medium settings on tivo to record programs and have
> no problem with that. Does anyone know the medium setting resolution
> on tivo? If so, approximately how many hours in MythTV could a 80gb
> hard drive use? (Assuming 70gb available after MP3 and OS)
>
googled for this. Can't vouch for accuracy:
Tivo:
Best Quality
544x480
5800.00 kbps
None
High Quality
480x480
3500.00 kbps
SVCD
Medium Quality
352x480
2600.00 kbps
VCD
Basic Quality
352x480
1470.00 kbps
VCD
Many people record at 640x480 which outshines even Tivo's "Best
Quality". I personally use 480x480, 3300 kbps (scaled) and mpg4 quality
setting of 2-12. I couldn't personally tell this apart from 640x480,
but maybe my tv isn't good enough (though it looks great to me!). By
the way, "scaled" means that if you set mythtv to record at 3300 kbps
at 640x480, then back off to 480x480, the bit rate will be reduced
proportionally. Upshot is that if you are recording at 480x480 you are
not really doing 3300 kbps. Anywho, the end result is the picture looks
awesome, much, much better than my friend's Tivo at "medium". You will
not be disappointed. Oh, my files weigh in at 1.1 Gig per hour.
Your question about recording and watching at the same time: I couldn't
tell what exactly you meant. So I'll just tell you how it is. Mythtv
can record one stream per tuner card. It can also play one stream at
the same time (assuming you have backend and frontend on one machine.
"Live" tv is really just recording a stream, and then playing the same
stream right away. So while your tuner is recording a stream you can a)
watch that stream (ie "live" tv), or b)watch a different, prerecorded
stream. Finally, if you have two tuners you can record two streams at a
time and watch one of them, or a different prerecorded stream. That
make sense? My *guess* is that a 2ghz celeron could handle two tuners,
but I'm not sure.
Finally, easy factor: If you are careful to pick motherboards, nics,
sound cards (or a motherboard with those built in) tuners, and graphics
cards carefully they will all pretty much just plug and play. And the
software is pretty easy to install if you carefully follow the docs at
www.mythtv.org/docs/ and you *read every word*. If you don't do enough
research (the lists are a good place to start) before you buy, you will
have to slam your head against the biggest hurdles that people seem to
run into when installing mythtv, namely hardware issues. The four
biggies seem to be sound cards without full duplex support, graphics
cards without xv support, tv-out issues (I use and external converter
that works great) and tuners which auto-detect as the wrong type. Look
over the lists, pick what people have been having good luck with, and
go to town.
best,
cedar
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