[mythtv-users] OT: HDMI and DVI questions

[Michael J. Lynch]

I am writing this because it is about myth and I have just about no 
experience
with HD and I am hoping that some of you HD experienced people out there
can enlighten me on a few items.  Thanks in advance for any comments and/or
suggestions.

Ok...so last weekend I went out and bought an HD ready rear projection
LCD monitor and Samsung TS360 HD receiver.  I have the reciever connected
to a Sat dish, and amplified outdoor antenna.  Everything looks awesome 
because
the connection between the receiver and monitor is DVI (receiver) to 
HDMI (monitor).

As far as I can tell the receiver's DVI is DVI-I (analog and digital) 
and since HDMI
is digital only my guess is the cable connects the digital side of the 
DVI to HDMI.

If this is the case, then the monitor is what is decoding the digital 
(MPEG2?) stream
is it not?  This got me thinking about how this fits in with Myth.

If the monitor is decoding the digital data, is there any reason for 
mythfrontend to
need to decode the data?  What I'm getting at here is if I were to 
connect my
myth box inline between the HD receiver and the monitor in the following
fashion:

    Rx DVI -------> DVI Myth DVI ------> HDMI monitor

The myth box would not have to be very powerful because essentially all
it would be doing is acting as a storage and buffering mechanism for
digital data woud it not?  In other words, wouldn't the the only really
performance required would be bandwidth to/from the myth box disk?

If this would work, what capture card would I need and what output
card would I need?  Is the DVI out on the ATI and/or nVidia cards
digital capable or are they analog only DVI outs?

-- 
Michael J. Lynch

What if the hokey pokey IS what it's all about -- author unknown