[mythtv-users] Asus Digimatrix

Graham Wheeler gram at bradygirl.com
Sun Jan 18 01:54:29 EST 2004


I'm probably nuts, but I went ahead and bought an Asus Digimatrix after
seeing one in a store and really liking the form factor. So I now have
the probably quite significant challenge of getting MythTV running on
it.

 

I'll post my results here, but thought I'd start off by commenting on
the windows software that comes with it. The software isn't bad, but has
one significant flaw: the Titan TV guide is not well integrated into the
TV recording scheduler. This is sufficiently aggravating that I can't
see this product really being able to take on MCE, TiVo, Myth or Freevo.
Even my ATI All-in-Wonder did better with Gem GuidePlus. Maybe I just
didn't set up the TitanTV stuff properly but there really didn't seem to
be much to set up.

 

Incidentally the software is made by Intervideo, and is probably a
fairly generic product that gets bundled by other TV card OEMs.

 

Recording quality seems okay. I saw one review which criticized the
tuner, but to me it seemed fine, compared with others I have recently
used, like a Hauppauge 250 and an AverTV Studio (I didn't get to do a
side-by-side compare but from memory they seemed pretty equivalent). The
tuner seems capable (although I had no way to test for sure) of handling
NTSC, PAL and SECAM - if so, this is quite a boon for anyone who may be
thinking of relocating countries!

 

When recording in best quality, with playback running behind, CPU usage
was about 63% - this is with a 2.4GHz P3 and 512Mb RAM. CPU temperature
went up from the low 40s to 53 degrees (Cellcius, of course).

 

It not only isn't a Windows MCE but fails to meet the bar in one
respect; MCE requires DXVA driver support for de-interlacing and the
driver that comes with it does not support that. So anyone hoping to
somehow get Windows MCE on it is unlikely to have success. 

 

One thing I didn't like is the DVD drive - simply because it is a
slimiline/laptop style, and so doesn't eject properly and feels quite
fragile when inserting and removing discs (which must be clicked into
place).

 

It looks great though, and I can't hear it which is nice.

 

More to follow. Wish me luck. If I can't get Myth working on it it's
going on eBay; hopefully I won't lose too much in this experiment (apart
from lots of time perhaps). Time to blow the Windows install with
Knoppix and start the long march.

 

Gramster

 

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