[mythtv-users] It's not the TiVo that she loved...

[Steven Adeff]

On 4/5/06, Marco Nelissen <marcone at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> >The only thing I find easier about Tivo over Myth currently is setup.
> >But given that TiVo, like Apple, is fixed hardware, that makes sense.
>
> It's not just because of the hardware. Myth, like many other popular
> open source projects, suffers from the "make it an option!" syndrome:
> every little thing is configurable, because some people want this and
> some people want that, and when consensus can't be reached, a feature
> is made configurable. Tivo on the other hand has severely limited the
> number of things you can configure, and sometimes that's a Good Thing.

true true, but at the same time its given Myth a lot of powerful
features that make it better than TiVo. What I find amazing is that
Myth is able to do all that with very little resources needed. What
Myth needs (and I guess has it with the PVR350 for SD) is a dedicated
video decoding processor like the TiVo has.

>
> >My only real gripe with the TV side of Myth right now is the CPU
> >requirements for HD which has caused playback hickups since I barely
> >meet the requirements. I'm sure with a >4000+ Athlon I wouldn't have
> >this issue. I also think I may need to increase the number of disks in
> >my RAID5 array, but thats only because I'll shortly be adding two HD
> >capable frontends.
>
> I have a combined front/backend, single disk, Athlon64 3200+ and it's
> more than sufficient for HD playback.

so was mine until I decided 3 HD tuners with a software RAID5 array
was all going to be handled by my fe/be machine. Now if I'm recording
3 HD shows mythbackend uses something like 30% CPU alone, not quite
enough to watch a 1080i show without XVMC. With nothing recording I
can watch 1080i with about 80% cpu usage.

Now I need to decide if building a dedicated be or upgrading the CPU
is the best way to go. I've got a spare Athlon 1800+ mobo with ram and
a video card that I can use, I can even upgrade the cpu to I think an
Athlon 2700+, so I'd need a case and a good power supply. Which I may
end up doing considerin the addition of 2 new frontends soon...

--
Steve