[mythtv-users] Re: Impossible to choose Motherboard?

Brad Templeton brad+myth at templetons.com
Sat Dec 11 04:37:07 UTC 2004


On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 07:51:13PM -0600, Lane Schwartz wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:13:42 -0800, Brad Templeton
> Not sure what you're getting at here. He's talking about getting a
> PVR-250 or 350. Those record straight to MPEG-2. The raw processing
> power you're talking about would really only come into play if he got
> a TV tuner that doesn't do hardware mpeg encoding, and then he wanted
> to export the recordings to mpeg.
> 
> Either AMD or Intel would have plenty of power when it comes to simply
> playing back normal standard definition MPEG2 recordings. Especially
> with the video card he's talking about.

Indeed, any modern processor can do SDTV and EDTV mpegs just fine.
If buying a new processor, the AMD are cheaper and run cooler as I
indicated.  You could probably buy a SEMPRON 2000.  (Or today I saw
Fry's selling a 1.6ghz Duron plus motherboard for $40!)

Indeed, if you just want an SD box, you probaby are better off buying
an older generation system, as such systems can be had dirt-dirt cheap
as seen above.   Used on eBay for diddly.

If you want to expand to HD soon (pretty soon -- never buy hardware
before you need it) you would be looking at the 3ghz class processors,
and there it makes a difference.

Though sadly, even though I run 50% idle or more on my P4-3ghz, I am
still getting the occasional skipped frames at full 1920x1080 resolution,
and it's ticking me off!


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