[mythtv-users] Re: New MythTV Hardware Review

Brad Templeton brad+myth at templetons.com
Mon Dec 6 07:48:11 UTC 2004


On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 11:10:41PM -0800, Doug Heimburger wrote:
> However, my understanding is that HD requires a decent amount of CPU
> to decompress, right? My G4 Powerbook struggles to decompress the
> MPEG-2 stream in software; I shudder to think about how it would do on
> an HD stream.

Most assuredly.  A 3ghz Pentium 4 is recommended.  Don't know what
level of PPC.  And a fancier video card.

Or you could make the bet that, by the time you are ready for HDTV,
myth will have decent xvmc support.  This means driving the mpeg
decoder built into even lower end video cards these days.  In that
case, a much slower processor could display HDTV.

However, the fundamental rule of hardware is never buy hardware
before you need it.   The rule gets changed for the HDTV tuner
card because of the law.  Otherwise, build for what you need now.

In the USA, however, I fear that the only reasons to build MythTV
right now are:

    a) You are a believer, or
    b) You like tinkering with the OS and device drivers
    c) You want HDTV in a PC based PVR.
    d) You are outside the USA.

Because frankly, if you are in the USA, and you just want a standard
definition PVR, you're going to be much better off in terms of time
spent and probably even money, just getting a Tivo, Replay or even
crap PVR from your cableco.

Thus, to me, HDTV is the whole point of the thing.  The only reasonable
HDPVR I could get right now would be the Tivo-HD for DirectTV.  It's
$1000 and locked up, and requires you subscribe to DirecTV.  Of course
that will change.


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