[mythtv-users] HDTV and SDTV playback

[Brad Templeton]

On Sun, Mar 06, 2005 at 04:57:42PM -0500, kedlm at charter.net wrote:
> Unless you are stuck with a broken xvideo setup, myth will scale the HD so it displays ok on the SDTV. (without any extra cpu load or transcoded copy)
> 
> Unless that is not what you want.

That's not quite true.  Doing this requires a fair chunk of CPU (it used
to be a 3ghz was a must, recently that's scaled back a bit).  On top of
that, I was surprised to learn that the nvidia xvideo drivers won't
scale 1080i down to 640x480, which is the most natural resolution to run
at for SDTV.   So you have to run your display at 1024 x 768, which
means you have to deinterlace, and then your tv-out re-interlaces which
I never thought was all that good.

Use of RANDR is recommended here so you can play your 480i video native
at 480i, and your HD video scaled into 1024x768 and then scaled again.

You can do the UI anywhere, but if you run at a higher res, you will
need to make the fonts big for any non-myth stuff you do (shells,
firefox.)