[mythtv-users] HDTV

Carlos Talbot carlos at talbot.net
Fri May 9 18:27:49 EDT 2003


Jason Schloer wrote:

>Does anyone know anything about this fusion hdtv card? I haven't found
>anything aboutl inux drivers, but it is 878 based, so it should be
>easier than most cards. It does do software decoding of the stream, but
>would an mpeg decoder card potentially be able to help, that or an
>accelerated graphics card. I noticed that the card says it needs lower
>cpu requirements with a directX video card. Also since ATSC streams are
>already compressed, if the stream could be pulled from the card, would
>it be very difficult to add to myth? Forgiev me for my ignorance,I'm
>just looking for the mythical conversion box everyone has talked
>about.....that handles HDTV as well.
>
>
>Jason Schloer
>Tango Enterprises, Inc.
>11150 Sunset Hills Rd., #250
>Reston, VA 20190
>Tel: 703-964-4000
>Fax: 703-964-4600
>  
>
 From what I understand this card has a tuner not recognized by the 
linux bttv driver (Sony I believe).

Before this card can even be supported by linux you have to consider the 
demand software playback of HDTV will put on a system. In the Windows 
world Microsoft has a DirectX api called DXVA which will offload mpeg2 
decoding onto the video card. If your video card does not have the 
necessary hardware you'll need a 2GHZ+ P4 for full software decoding of 
1080i HDTV streams. ATI Radeons and certain NVIDIA cards have hardware 
support for IDCT and motion compensation.

The good news is that Nvidia has support for an API in their binary only 
drivers to access his hardware. From appendix P in the release notes: 
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-4363/README.txt

(app-p) APPENDIX P: XVMC SUPPORT 
__________________________________________________________________________

This release includes support for the X-Video Motion Compensation (XvMC)
version 1.0 API on GeForce4 and GeForce FX products only.  There is a static
library "libXvMCNVIDIA.a" and a dynamic one "libXvMCNVIDIA_dynamic.so"
which is suitable for dlopening.  GeForce4 MX and GeForce FX products support 
both XvMC's "IDCT" and "motion-compensation" levels of acceleration.  
GeForce4 Ti products only support the motion-compensation level.  AI44 and IA44


subpictures are supported.  4:2:0 Surfaces up to 2032x2032 are supported.





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