[mythtv-users] HDTV Woes

Todd Tidwell artist at wildstar.net
Fri Apr 1 16:49:31 UTC 2005


> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org [mailto:mythtv-users-
> bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Mat Kyne
> Sent: Friday, April 01, 2005 8:41 AM
> To: mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> Subject: [mythtv-users] HDTV Woes
> 
> After 5 attempts to get myth running correctly on FC3, I tried (for the
> 3rd
> time) to install Knoppmyth.
> I am pleased to report that after much online research, the drivers were
> loaded for my pcHDTV 3000, and eventually, my nVidia 5200 FX. So, after
> calling my wife at work and demanding that she cross her fingers, I
> selected
> the option "Watch TV"  . . . And there it was! GLORIOUS HDTV !!! . . . .
> For
> about 2 seconds. Then it froze and crashed.  :(
> 
> Well I had heard that HDTV live was not all that great, So I set it to
> record Lost in ABC.
> 
> -I had to schedule a manuel recording, because the myth guide times were
> off
> by several hours- I will ask about that in a later post.-
> 
> Well, while I was watching the show on SDTV, I saw my HDD light start to
> blink, so I knew it was recording. Yeah!
> 
> So after my wife went to bed, when I am allowed to "Play with my stupid
> computer" I tried to watch the show I recorded.  --You can probably tell
> that this is not going to end well --
> 
> Well the picture was amazing, but the playback was choppy/jittery. If I
> tried to fast-forward or skip a commercial, The system would just hang. I
> was able to Ctrl-Alt-Esc out ant try again. Then I remembered reading
> Jarod's Guide (You da man!), and what he had written about giving Myth
> root
> privileges (I think it's called suedo-root). So I did that, and tried
> again.
> No real improvement, and when I tried to skip a commercial, the system
> crashed. I couldn't even ssh in to do a nice reboot.
> 
> So my question that I lay before the all-knowing Mythtv guru's is this,
> What
> am I doing wrong. Do I just need a faster processor (I currently have a
> 2.4
> Ghz Celeron that I bought just for this)? Or are there other things that I
> can try first. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks -Mat
> 

I would think that you'd have enough processor there to handle it, but if
not, you're lucky: you have an nVidia 5200 which you can use XvMC with to
offload some of the processing to the video cards processor.

Before you try that, though, are you using the nVidia drivers or the one
built-in to FC3?  If you aren't, you probably want to go get the nVidia
drivers either way, and then you have the XvMC option available and you
might also see a small improvement in general display performance (I
certainly did).

Sadly, I don't know enough about knoppmyth to tell you whether the XvMC
support comes compiled in or if you're going to have to do a compile
yourself.  Also, sadly, XvMC support is currently going through some hurdles
and may not be to a level you can live with until the .18 release (or the
next few days in CVS).

-Todd




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