[mythtv-users] Is it worth upgrading AMD sempron 3000+ to sempron 3400+

[Michael T. Dean]

On 08/29/2006 10:56 AM, Steven Adeff wrote:
> On 8/29/06, Kevin Hulse <jedi at mishnet.org> wrote:
>   
>>         My Athlon64 3500 runs at about 3:1. It takes 3 times as long
>> as the runlength of a video in order to convert it from mpeg2 (DVD)
>> to H.264.
...
> I'd like to know why your transcoding from DVD to H.264? In order to
> get similar quality at a significantly smaller bitrate your never
> going to be able to play the H.264 file with out a DSP.
>   

Unless he down-res's any high-resolution video to something his 
processor can handle.

Still, though, I agree with your sentiment, Steve: there's not a lot of 
file size benefit to H.264 (a.k.a. MPEG-4 AVC a.k.a. MPEG-4 Part 10) 
compared to MPEG-4 Part 2 when you're also down-res'ing.  If you 
down-res HDTV to SDTV resolutions (or you start out with SDTV 
resolutions), MPEG-4 Part 2 can easily provide good quality at 1GiB/hr.  
And, in the 1GiB/hr range, using 3-hours of processing time/1-hour 
recording for space savings is a lot of unnecessary computing compared 
to just buying a new 300GB HDD for $80 or so.  Since MPEG-4 Part 2 takes 
just a bit more than half the bitrate of MPEG-2 and since H.264 was 
designed to use half the bitrate of MPEG-2, you're really not getting 
much space savings per SDTV-sized file.

And, when you factor in the relative immaturity of H.264, it seems the 
best reason to use that CODEC (when you're not forced to by European 
high-def standards ;), is just to play with the technology.  Now, for 
OTA HDTV, it does have the benefit of saving bandwidth in the 
already-too-limited available spectrum (where the spectrum is more 
valuable than the processing time), so, IMHO, it makes far more sense 
there than on a Myth box.

Mike