[mythtv-users] HDTV Playback (was Re:inexpensive frontend?)

Brandon Beattie bbeattie-maillist at linkexplorer.com
Wed Nov 19 16:52:16 EST 2003


My opinion, is get a P4 2.6Ghz (Not the 2.66) as a minimum.  I highly
recommend P4 CPU's with hyper threading.  For AMD, a 3.0Ghz minimum.  I
run a 2600+ amd and it's not fast enough to do 1080i, commercial
detection, and de-interlacing.  (Pick any 1 :) ...)

I will have a p4 3.0 to test this weekend to see if that can do all
three.  

XvMC I don't recommend as it has very poor video quality when it has to
upscale video (Such as 480i).  Do it in CPU, it looks much better and
that's the point of HDTV.

MythTV also is not fully optimized.  You can get HDTV with a 1.8Ghz
system with an optimized player, but such a player does not exist yet
for Linux (*Mplayer is the closest bet until MythTV has it) (I may be
wrong though for MythTV's optimization).  I recommend defaulting on
error and getting a better CPU and a cheap $30.00 nvidia geforce 4 MX
card. (Which can do XvMC, but you don't want to).  If you have a slower
PC, you'll notice frame jumps.  I personally will be transcoding HDTV to
1024x576 (My native HD resolution) so my 2600+ will be fine, unless it's
live-tv then it will stutter.  And remember, HDTV only requires
processing for decoding, encoding is already done when you get the HD
stream and it just needs IO and CPU for writing ~3-5MB/s to disk, and
reading frmo disk (which on my jfs fs, is about 15% of my usage)

--Brandon


On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 08:02:21AM +1100, Kent Williams wrote:
> Speaking of HDTV playback, what speed system would be able to playback
> HDTV recordings in software? My P4 1.5GHz doesn't seem to cut it and I
> was wondering what speeds am I looking at to get it going in software
> (or if I'm doing something horribly wrong)?
> 
> Are all MPEG hardware decoder cards are capable of decoding HDTV at a
> decent speed?
> 
> Cheers,
> Kent
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: audin at okb-1.org [mailto:audin at okb-1.org] 
> Sent: Tuesday, 18 November 2003 8:22 AM
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Re:inexpensive frontend?
> 
> On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 03:07:27PM -0600, Aran Cox wrote:
> 
> 
> 	Does anyone know if an xbox is powerful enough/well supported
> enough
> to play back HDTV content?  I have a pcHDTV on order but I fear my dual
> Athlon
> MP2200+ with Radeon 7000 video isn't going to cut it for playback.  I'm
> not
> terribly interested in supporting NVidia's binary-only drivers.
> 
> -- 
>                                             Audin Malmin -
> audin at okb-1.org
> 
> The tiny sounds of ancient bees resound forth from the forrested
> coercions between your toes.
> 
> 

> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list