[mythtv-users] What are my realistic expections with pvr250 and P3 600Mhz?

[Kelly]

Hi all,

I've been researching and reading threads here...thought the one on Myth 
pausing and skipping related to me...but, I think my sound is correct....

When watching live tv, I get this skipping and pausing of video and 
audio...this is at 480x480.

I can get to near skip free at 320x480....but, occasionally the picture 
'tears'....

I've got a GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x
P3 600 Mhz Pentium
Haupauge PVR 250
Audigy2 sound card
256 M RAM

Gentoo Linux, 2.6.5 kernel with KDE 3.2

I'm currently just running to my Viewsonic monitor, not to the tv yet. 

I guess, with this low end of a box...what can I realistically expect? I 
thought from my early readings, that with the PVR hardware compression...I 
could get 480x480....but, this just doesn't seem to work on my box. When not 
doing live tv or recording...I'm only at about 2% cpu usage.....when on live 
tv or recording...cpu usage jumps to 90%-92% with vertical settings from 480 
to 320.

Am I barking up a wrong tree here? I was trying to utilize a marginal 
box...will this not realistically work without a processor in the Athlon 1.2 
- 2.4 range processor?

I think I've gotten everything set mostly right...I'm currently trying now to 
find out if the MythTV bitrates for audio and video have optimal 
settings...but, nothing found so far.

Anyway, if someone could let me know if this processor even with the hardware 
encoding is too slow, it would let me quit trying to trouble shoot...and go 
buy new hardware right off to bat and junk this....or maybe point me to links 
to read up on possible tweaks....I'd very much appreciate it.

Thanks in advance for patience with a total noob...trying to learn a bunch of 
stuff at once...

cayenne