[mythtv-users] PVR 350 quick questions

Torsten Schenkel torsten.schenkel at web.de
Fri Nov 7 19:30:38 EST 2003


On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 23:56, m0j0.j0j0 wrote:

> On the IVTV list there was some talk of potentially doing quick YUV
> transfers to the device for output, rather than MPEG. Unfortunately, I'm
> fairly clueless here. Could you (or anyone for that matter) clue me in
> to what that means?

ATM, you can simply send an mpeg stream to the pvr's decoder which will
then be decoded by the card and displayed on TV. All decoding in H/W on
the pvr, the pc only needs to manage the data transfer. This is what we
have now. In combination with the framebuffer device that can be
overlayed over the decoder stream this gives the possibility to display
the X screen or the OSD while watching tv, vcd, svcd. (vcd/svcd is not
supported out of the box, but works. Some dvds work as well, stereo as
first audio stream)

The firmware supports another stream type: YUV, wich will bypass the
decoder, but will be displayed on the tv using the h/w scaler. (The
framebuffer can be overlayed as well). When the cpu decodes the video to
yuv, then basically any video format can be displayed. Unfortunately
neither ivtv nor mplayer or xine do support this feature. But I guess it
will be possible before years's end. 

> Based on your email it's looking to me like the PVR350 TV-OUT is only
> useful if you plan only to use Myth for watching TV. If you ever wish to
> use Xmame or other graphics heavy app, you need a normal TV-out video
> card. Am I missing anything?

I don't use Mythmusic visualizations in fullscreen, because my cpu is to
slow for them anyways. But they don't use xv IIRC, at least they didn't
on my workstation (Radeon 9500 Pro). But I guess a fast cpu should be
able to display them and xmame on the framebuffer. If I can lay hands on
a rom, I might try (Epia 600MHz Eden). ATM I'm only using the pvr
tv-out, but might try the onboard tv-out for things like mame and such
(and xine, but after the pvr's tv-out anything else is a pain to watch).
The mythbox freed some of the inputs on the A/V amplifier :-)

Torsten    
-- 
Config files for PVR350 TV-Out:
http://www-isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hi93/ivtv-pvr-350-conf.tgz



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