[mythtv-users] Hardware ideas

[Jarod Wilson]

On Thursday 24 June 2004 13:35, David Wood wrote:
>
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Stephen Tait wrote:
> > IIRC, Athlon 2600's have the best power/watt ratio. If you do use big
> > hard drives, make sure they're quiet - personally, I'd recommend a
> > seperate system disc and storage disc or (even better) keeping the
> > storage on a completely different machine.
>
> Thanks - that's good to know. I thought seriously about splitting the
> frontend from the backend but it's not practical for me, so I'll end up
> compromising there.

I just split mine off to a dedicated box, partially in a noise-reduction 
effort, but mainly because I wanted to muck with my Athlon XP 3200 and my 
pcHDTV card, but the 3200 was the master backend. I'm rolling with an old 
dual PIII-733 Dell box w/a 40GB system HD (which also houses the system image 
for netbooting my EPIA frontend and the live TV buffer directory), a 250GB 
drive for all my recordings, and two tuners. The EPIA also stores its 
recordings there (captured w/its PVR-350). The 3200 is now running FC2 with a 
pcHDTV-patched 2.6.7 kernel. Tonight I try getting actual video out of the 
pcHDTV card again...

> > IANAPVR350U, but no, you won't have any problems playing back anything
> > MPEG2 related. MPEG4 (e.g. xvids and transcoded TV shows) won't of course
> > be able to use any of the MPEG2 decoding hardware, so must all be done in
> > software, which is why you need a fairly beefy CPU.
>
> I've read the PVR350 has the best quality of the readily available "TV
> out" hardware.

Its damned good. I'm still very happy with what I get out of a GeForce 4 MX, 
but after finally getting my 350 stable for an extended period of time, I'm 
starting to appreciate its quality more. The quality isn't worth it unless 
the machine is stable.

> Then again, I get the sense that (necessarily) there are 
> "issues" with it just because the driver is still in active development.

Yes, indeed.

> I had also heard than when used for things other than MPEG2 decoding there
> were problems - that in fact you can't do Divx/xvid/etc at all at the
> moment due to driver issues (ordinary 2d performance too slow?).
>
> Can any 350 owners confirm/deny? This would make or break for me.

Deny (well, sort of). My EPIA M10000 (wimpy VIA C3 at 1GHz, performs more like 
a Pentium III at 600MHz) can play back many xvid and ffmpeg mpeg4 encoded dvd 
rips perfectly smooth. Other types aren't so smooth. But if you're using an 
Athlon XP 2600, you might be fine with all types. Then again, I never had a 
stable system when using a PVR-350 in an Athlon XP 2600 system (VIA KM400 
board, MSI KM4M-L). The ivtv drivers are somewhat picky about which chipsets 
they'll work reliably with. They're great w/EPIAs though!

> > Well, the combo of the PVR-250 and an nVidia card (GeForceFX 4000 in my
> > case) has proved stable, fast and reliable, despite closed source drivers
> > (I stuck with the 2.4 kernel, as 2.6 still has some creases that need
> > sorting out WRT to nVidia and ivtv).
>
> Actually, I'd love to know more specifically what those creases were!

The very latest 2.6 kernels from Red Hat and kernel.org, have a new feature, 
4kstacks, enabled by default. Neither the nvidia or ivtv drivers are 
4kstacks-clean. At present, you can recompile a kernel with the old style 
8kstacks, but that won't be an option in the future. Expect updated drivers 
before too much longer, and the problems should be no more...

> Now I am thinking of maybe going in another direction altogether and just
> relying on the CPU, using something like an AverTV stereo (bttv)

I have one of these. The tuner is junk, picture quality is mediocre. The 
PVR-x50 cards are far better.

> and mx440.

And I have a number of these. They work quite well.

> This would be cheaper and maybe easier, given that (I think) I have 
> the CPU horsepower to do better compression anyway? Or will I?

You'll save a few bucks, but spending the extra money for a PVR-x50 is worth 
it, IMO. For reference, I have four hardware encoder cards and two software 
ones. The two software ones now do nothing more than tune FM radio on my 
workstation, three of the hardware encoder cards are in my production Myth 
boxes, one in my dev box. You can always transcode to mpeg4 post-mpeg2 
capture if space is a concern.

> > I went with a CoolerMaster
> > 620 BX myself (mATX) which has the added advantage of *not* using a
> > proprietary small form factor PSU (which are very expensive to replace
> > when the fan goes!). I chucked in a nice ATX PSU, 7Volted the CPU and
> > system and it's very quiet indeed and runs cool to boot.
>
> I read the same thing about that Antec case. It's interesting, a lot of
> the HTCP cases I've seen are still too deep (over 14").

I have the CoolerMaster ATC-620C-BX1 myself. I love it. Far more than any of 
Antec's supposed HTPC cases.

> > The less equipment you have under your TV and the more centtralised the
> > system is, the better.
> >
> :D

I agree. My master backend and the first two capture cards are now in a 
machine on the rack in my garage, well out of earshot, along with my beast 
music and movie server. My frontend machines do nothing but hook back to 
those two for all their content. (Except the HDTV stuff, which I'll hopefully 
get rolling tonight...)

-- 
Jarod C. Wilson, RHCE
jcw at wilsonet.com

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