[mythtv-users] Hardware ideas

[Stephen Tait]

At 14:49 24/06/2004 -0700, you wrote:
>On Thursday 24 June 2004 14:20, David Wood wrote:
> > This is really helpful, thanks! You reminded me just now that I've seen
> > other success stories about the 9200 as well. Sounds like that's the card
> > to get.
>
>Hold on just a sec... One person's FUD-spreading about nVidia cards shouldn't
>outweigh the myriad of folks that are very happy using them, myself included.

Add another one to that. I've always been very impressed by nVidia cards, 
under both platforms. IME, ATI haven't been so great on the other hand.


> > I did have my doubts about the mx440 s-video quality. I've been fighting
> > with "afterthought" s-video on nvidia cards for a while (I've had two).
> > The latter, ti4400, is passable but that's in windows.
>
>Not all cards are created equal. My Chaintech cards all produce very good
>quality video on a TV hooked to it via SVideo. The difference in quality
>between a PVR-350 and my GF4 cards is fairly miniscule.

The TV-Out chips are heavily vendor-dependent I imagine - some will be 
better than others.


> > Now I'm definitely leaning towards software encoding+decoding. Cheaper and
> > perhaps better?
>
>Depends. Some of the cards that require software encoding are absolute crap.
>The picture quality from my hardware-encoder cards is much better than that
>from my non-hw-encoding cards.

Again, have to agree on this one. I get much better results from my PVR-250 
than from any software card I've seen.


> > On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Clyde Stubbs wrote:
> > > If you want TV-out, I recommend staying away from the MX440 - the closed
> > > source drivers lack various features like interlacing, and the picture
> > > quality from the on-board TV encoder is disappointing. The open-source
> > > drivers have dismal performance.
>
>And I recommend the GeForce 4 MX-440. Works great for me, and many other
>folks. And for the second time, the TV encoder on a GeForce card DOES
>interlace the signal for output to a TV, just like the Radeon does. The
>no-interlacing ONLY affects VGA or DVI output. Now, perhaps the Radeon does
>better with timings than the GF4s. I'm curious if you have deinterlacing
>turned on in your setup...

If you don't need the 3D accel, go with the ATI - naturally the OSS drivers 
are solid as hell. If you want 3D accel (i.e. if you want to do funky 
things with the display using OpenGL - my flatmate likes to fall asleep to 
Really Slick Screensavers ;^) then go for the nVidia. Closed source they 
may be, but as long as you go for one of the "stable" releases, they're 
totally solid. I've not had any lockups from the nVidia drivers for about a 
year now (my friend still gets grief from his, but he has a mobo with a 
known AGP bug), and even with a budget card performance is *very* good.

As a personal preference, I'm always more inclined to go the nVidia route, 
as they're actively persuing Linux development, even to the extent of open 
sourcing their "glue" code that links the kernel to the binary module (I 
think), and I'd rather see a 
"all-important-bits-closed-but-kernel-independant" driver than no driver at 
all.

Damnit, I've run out of 2p pieces.