[mythtv-users] PVR250 question

[Paul Smith]

> > - is the PVR250/350 code reliable enough yet?
>
>It's CVS code; reliability is not guaranteed.  It's kernel-mode
>driver code; by definition, it may totally trash your system.

Note I said 'reliable enough', not '100% reliable' :-)

I'm getting the feeling that it probably is 'reliable enough' at the moment.

>If you're not comfortable with running CVS code, you should probably
>wait.

I'm game to give things a try. I am currently running latest CVS code. The 
PC is purely for MythTV, so if it all collapses, it's not too much of a 
problem...

> > - Can MythTV handle 3 capture cards in one PC?
>
>Can MythTV handle it?  Sure.  Can your CPU?  That's the better
>question.

The CPU should be able to - TOP shows about 20-30% for recording on one 
card, and about the same for playback. So, adding another card should still 
leave 10-20% free for the MPEG2 card which should be enough ;-)

>   I don't know that anyone has that many capture cards in
>their machine, mostly because you'll have to make a tradeoff in
>resolution to run that many cards unless you have a very fast
>processor,

An Athlon XP 2800+ is pretty fast. As I said, I don't think it's been a 
possibility until the MPEG encoder support came along. I certainly wouldn't 
try to do it with 3 'dumb' tuners.

>and the delta between getting 1 really fast processor with
>3 cards in it vs a bunch of smaller/cheaper boxes may not be worth
>it.

Hmm, not sure there..

>   You're probably going to start running into PCI bandwidth issues
>as well.

Yep, I was thinking of that, PCI & hard disk speed might become a problem. 
Hard disk speed I can probably resolve (I've got a SCSI RAID controller 
lying around ;-) RAID 0 across 4 U160 disks should be fast enough), but PCI 
bandwidth is a limiting factor.

(Anyone know if/how you can measure the utilisation of PCI bandwidth? ;-) )


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