[mythtv-users] Has anybody put together a three tuner system

[Poul Petersen]

> Question:  Any thoughts on how I can see if its PCI bandwidth,
> HD limits, or CPU?  When my machine starts skipping bad, the 
> CPU load actually goes down.  Is that because the frame buffers
> are full and and new ones are skipped, or possibly PCI or HD
> limitations.  The answer may influence how I upgrade my system
> to a permanent solution.

	That might make sense - if the disk gets behind and the encoder
decides to drop a frame or two to catch up, then that would would
temporarily reduce the work the CPU has to do. If you want to get a good
idea of where the bottlenecks are in your system, have a look at systat
(http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sebastien.godard/) It has many features and
capabilities especially on Linux; too many to go into here. Basically
you can configure the "sa1" command to log performance statistics at a
regular interval and then use the "sar" command to extract the
interesting bits. Then follow basic analysis technique: establish a
baseline with a quiscient system, etc...

-poul