[mythtv-users] Good card for HD playback

[Joe Votour]

--- Warren <warren-lists at icruise.com> wrote:

> I have seen a lot of discussion about the FX-5200
> being a good card for
> SD playback, but what is a good card for HD
> playback?  The TV is a
> Samsung DLP and has DVI and Component available.  I
> have an LC11M case
> coming as a gift and would like to find a good but
> inexpensive setup for
> a myth frontend machine that will do HD.  Advise on
> a microatx
> motherboard and cpu would be good too.  Again this
> is just for playback
> - no tuner card will be in this box nor will there
> be much of (if any)
> hard drive.
> 
> Any advise?
> 
> W
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> 

A 5200FX card will work fine for playback of HD
streams.

The CPU is more important though, because the CPU is
ultimately banging the bits to the video card.  I have
an Athlon64 3200+ (socket 754 board), and here's my
observations on HD:
1. Under Windows, I have absolutely no problems
playing back HD content.  I believe that this is
because the nVidia drivers under Windows are giving me
the hardware assisted MPEG-2 playback.
2. Under MythTV, I can playback the same HD clips with
the odd "prebuffering pause", depending on my setup.
(the CPU is running at roughly 75-90%, mythfrontend
and X combined)
3. XvMC (at least on a 5200FX) is not really worth
using at this point.  The video gets out of sync with
the audio eventually, and also the video clip itself
starts slowing down.
4. I can use either Bob (2x) deinterlacing OR OpenGL
Vsync, but not both at the same time without the
prebuffering pauses.  I suspect that this is just
because my CPU is being overloaded with the sheer
amount of HD data.  Disabling one or the other seems
to get rid of the prebuffering pauses, unfortunately,
I need both, or else the picture tears.

Based on this, I'm going to switch to 64-bit Fedora
Core 5 when I get a chance and see if that helps out -
I'm so close that it might give me just enough extra
performance to stop the prebuffering pauses.  However,
if something else like commercial flagging were to
start, then I get major glitches.

I'm likely going to switch to an Athlon64 X2 3800+ at
some point when they get a bit cheaper.  Just can't
afford it right now.

-- Joe

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com