[mythtv-users] hdtv on low end hardware

[Michael T. Dean]

Jim wrote:

> Ok, so now that my prior question was answered (pvr 350 won't decode 
> hdtv stream from hd5000), I'm moving on to the next logical step.
>
> I'm trying to avoid having to upgrade to better hardware but I do 
> realize that it may be the best solution.
>
> So I have a PIII 800 in an abit se-6 motherboard, with a hd5000 air2pc 
> tuner and gforce 440mx video card. I installed the latest knoppmyth 
> which supports the hd5000.  Right now, I'm just displaying on the 
> monitor. The goal is to display on a standard tv soon and eventually 
> an hdtv in the distant future.
>
> The regular def digital stations seem to play with just a minor 
> stutter. Annoying but I can live with it. The hdtv channels stutter 
> terribly and eventually lock up. I thought that maybe switching to a 
> geforce 5600fx would help. It seemed to make no difference.
>
> So the question is, can I tweak some things to make the hdtv channels 
> play better? I keep reading how the Nvidia cards have hardware mpeg 
> decoding (which I was hoping my pvr 350 was going to do). It seems 
> like the nvidia card should do almost all of the work. My little pIII 
> should not have to do much. How can I tell if the nvidia card is 
> really doing the heavy lifting or not?
>
http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1

See the section HDTV.  I realize that you're not displaying the video in 
high definition, but--assuming you have Xv configured--the video card 
does the scaling basically for free, so there's real performance benefit 
to displaying on an SDTV (so you need the same equipment you would if 
you were displaying it on an HDTV).

Mike