[mythtv-users] "Good Enough" specs for HDTV?

[Steven Adeff]

On 8/12/06, Richard Freeman <r-mythtv at thefreemanclan.net> wrote:
> Scott wrote:
> >
> > Ah, that's a good point... I'm going to be using this desktop as both
> > the front and backend.
>
> I'm running comparable graphics hardware on a backend machine, and the
> front-end can be run with live HDTV on the same machine without visual
> artifacts, although it uses a fair amount of CPU.  This machine is
> running 64-bit on a A64 3200+ with 2GB RAM - so I have a lot more CPU
> power available.  Since I have a cheap video card I figured my config is
> at least relevant.  If I try playing back files using mplayer the output
> informs me that it is dropping some frames, but not enough to be visibly
> noticeable.
>
> HDTV definitely requires some horsepower.  It doesn't work at all on my
> 1GHz EPIA front-end (running minimyth) despite the hardware MPEG-2
> decoder.  I'm not really interested in HDTV video though - once I get it
> running full-steam I'll just have it immediately transcoded down to 480p
> (standard-def TV).  I'm more interested in the higher input quality (vs
> satellite) and the AC3 audio stream (which means I can't just use
> mythtranscode to convert it since it doesn't have an option to do an
> audio passthough).  I probably will need to use it sparingly since it
> takes about 2 hours to transcode a 1-hour program and I can't watch the
> shows on my EPIA front-end until they're transcoded.  This is a bit of a
> long-term project in any case (I still don't have an antenna up for a
> decent ATSC signal yet).

My current bedroom remote frontend is an Athlon XP1600+ with a FX5200
and using XvMC am able to play 1080i with Onefield and Bob
deinterlacing. I get about 60% CPU from my brief checks, which isn't
bad at all, and I could see an even slower CPU doing 1080i with XvMC,
though I don't think I'd exactly recommend it.


-- 
Steve
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