[mythtv-users] Plextor ConvertX - Dropped frames watching live tv

[EC]

Hi,

   I don't have a good answer for you, but, as a Plextor ConvertX user
myself (I use 2 PX-TV402U boxes, MythTV 0.18-1 too), I thought I'd note
that it CAN work very well - though at times it seems a bit touchy.

   You might want to see if you can record OK.  When you watch LiveTV,
your system has to capture, store, and then decode an MPeg4 stream.  The
capture is easy because the ConvertX does the MPeg4 encoding itself.
Your system has to do the rest, however.  MPeg4 takes quite a bit of CPU
power to decode.  Of course, determining whether it's the recording or
the playback of the recording could still be a bit tricky, if you have
trouble with recorded shows too...  I'd guess it'd be easiest to try the
recording on another computer, if possible.

   If you don't record OK, I would try looking to see if the USB bus is
sharing interrupts with a high speed device.  I guess it's not really
supposed to matter, but, at least sometimes, it does.  Also, I assume
you are using the latest drivers from plextor/wis (I think it's
currently 0.97).

   If you do record OK, I'd guess that your system isn't being able to
quite keep up with the decoding and playing of the stream.  It might be
that you can optimize/set driver options.  It may be that the CPU is a
little slow.  Somebody else would have to answer that, though.
--
       EC

   

   

On Thu, 2005-11-10 at 13:01 -0500, Steven Sluter wrote:
> I'm running Myth-tv 0.18.1 on an Athlon 800 w/256MB ram.  My video card is
> an Nvidia FX5200 pci card with Nvidia driver v. 7667.  OS is Fedora Core 4,
> with kernel 2.6.13.  Hard drive is a 40GB 7200 RPM IDE drive w/ DMA enabled.
> The ConvertX is hooked up to a USB-2 card.
> 
> When watching live tv, I notice a slight stutter every 5-8 seconds -- not
> easily noticed, but enough to be annoying.  I have not tried recording a
> show for later playback.
> 
> One thing I've noticed is that the Nvidia linux driver doesnt seem to be
> entirely stable (The computer will lock up if I try and run alsamixer in an
> xterm).  All other 7xxx series drivers were completely unusable, causing the
> computer to experience frequent lock-ups.
> 
> I think I've ruled out the hard drive as the culprit.  Any ideas?
> 
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