[mythtv-users] Basic requirements (hardware)

[Craig Longman]

Patrick Wagstrom wrote:

>Craig Longman [craigl at begeek.com] wrote:
>  
>
>>the thing i don't understand though, is LOWERing the bitrate shouldn't 
>>expose bad disk performance problems.  it /might/ expose insufficient 
>>cpu, but then i would think that my proc usage should go up.  having it 
>>not go up, maybe indicates bus performance problems, but i'm not sure. 
>> i think the most likely candidate is timing problems, but thats what i 
>>need to investigate.
>>
>>one thing i thought though, if you're going away, you might not want to 
>>screw around with it.  if lowering it further does cause problems on 
>>your system, then it will be un-usable for you wife.  i know mine 
>>doesn't really care for all the experimenting i'm doing with our main tv 
>>source... especially if it interferes with things like ER...;-)
>>    
>>
>I doubt that it has to deal with lowering the bitrate, it's probably
>something else that is showing up as a side effect of the lowering of
>the bitrate.  I set my bitrate to bitrate=2500000,bitrate_peak=5000000
>and haven't noticed any problems.  And I'm even running on slower
>hardware than you guys (700MHz athlon, 4500 RPM disk drive).  So if it
>is a bitrate problem, I'm not experiencing it.
>
>I was getting some skipping at first, then I realized that spamassassin
>was causing it (non-dedicated box).  I changed it to run spamd and force
>a nice level of 15 for spamd and the jitters went away.
>
yeah, it sounds weird, which is why i hadn't planned on mentioning it 
until i looked into it more. but it is definitely just lowering the 
bitrate for me, for both livetv and recorded shows.  i can set it to 
8Mbs, watch no problem, exit livetv, change to 2.5Mbs, and then livetv 
skips, exit and switch back to 8Mbs, and it works fine.  after switching 
back and forth 3 full times, i was reasonably convinced that it was the 
bitrate.  i even tried going to an older version of the ivtv driver that 
i prefer to the current, and it did the same thing.  and it is dependant 
to the bitrate, at 2.5Mbs, it happens after a little while and pretty 
much stays.  at 4Mbs, its only every 5-10 minutes, and less noticeable. 
 at 5Mbs i only noticed it once during a 30 minute show.

anyway, i'm going to try and figure it out once i get transcoding done. 
 for the time being, 8Mbs works for me.

cheers,

    CraigL->Thx();