[mythtv-users] numerous newbie questions

Peter T. Abplanalp pta-myth at psaconsultants.com
Fri May 27 13:42:30 UTC 2005


mike,

thanks for the reply!

* On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 02:55:08AM -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> Peter T. Abplanalp wrote:
> >keep up.  is that true?  does anyone know if the ati
> >wonder pro does onboard encoding and if so, how do i get
> >that working?
> >
> No.  It's a frame grabber.  Requires software encoding, so
> your P2/450 is a bit underpowered.

that's exactly what i was afraid of; however, i did ask the
sales person whether the card did onboard mpeg2 encoding
before i bought it at worst buy and the sales person said
yes it did.  oh well, i guess i can always use it as another
recording source.  i assume that if i get a faster cpu, the
video recorded from this card will be acceptable.  is that
true?

> If you get a PVR-350, you don't need a video card with TV
> out.  (Also, if you don't upgrade your CPU, you'll
> probably want to go with the PVR-350,

ok but if i have a video card and the pvr-350, how does
linux know where to pipe what?  or is linux out of the loop
and the tv out of the 350 is strictly tv tuner output?  or
does all video out go to both outputs?  say i want to use
the 350 to hardware decode a recording, how does that work?

> but as a PVR-350 owner who's not using PVR-350 TV out
> because of its shortcomings

what short comings are those?

> >actually, can someone please explain how the video and
> >audio is handled?  specifically, how do things need to be
> >wired to and from the computer.
> >
> Depends on what you're hooking up--analog cable, digital
> cable with serial control, digital cable with IR control,
> digital cable with firewire, satellite with serial
> control, satellite with IR control, ...

i will be hooking up digital cable.  i think i will be
buying a second tuner card so what i would like is to hook
one cable directly to one tuner card and get a subset of
channels there (specifically, 2-63 in my case) and hook the
output of the stb to the second card; however, i have a
crappy stb with no rs232 or other data port so i think i
will have to set up an ir blaster.  true?  in my stb
scenario, i think that the stb will handle the actual
channel changing and that the card in this case will be set
to some fixed channel (usually 3 or 4 like a vcr.)  is this
also true?  is there some good documentation on remotes in
general somewhere?  speaking of the crappy stb, i am using
comcast's service, does anyone have any experience asking
comcast for a better stb with a data port?

> >finally, the video is pretty awful when viewed on the
> >screen.  why might that be?
> >
> P2/450 and a frame grabber instead of a hardware encoder.
> Might also be a bad choice of resolution/bitrate, but you
> should probably focus on the encoding problem first (i.e.
> either get a hardware encoder, a better CPU/motherboard,
> or--better yet--both).

that's what i thought, thanks for the confirmation.  on the
resolution/bitrate issue, is there some good documentation
somewhere i could read up on with respect to this?  i don't
think i understand computer/tv resolution, dpi v 720x680
stuff, scan rates, hdtv, etc.

thanks again for the help!

-- 
Peter Abplanalp
PGP:     pgp.mit.edu


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