[mythtv-users] Hardware for HD Playback

[Mike LaPlante]

Chris Tepe wrote:
> With the change from Zap2it to SD probably requiring an upgrade I'm 
> thinking of upgrading my hardware as well to support HD recording and 
> play back.  I'm looking for some recommendations  as to MB, CPU, Memory 
> and Video Card.  I will eventually have 1 master backend/frontend and 2+ 
> frontends.  I've looked at the hardware databases on the web but none 
> really address the HD issue clearly.  My current systems are a couple of 
> atholon 2300+ w/ nVidia gforce cards  and a HD Home run .  my playback 
> was very choppy. 
> _______________________________________________
>
>   
My backend is an athlon 2800 with an FX5200, its pretty old school. It 
plays HD okay with XvMC on, playback can sometimes get choppy if 
mythcommflag or something is running.

My remote frontend, which is where I do 95% of my viewing is also a 
pretty old P4 2.4ghz with 2gigs of DDR and a GeForce 6600. I have zero 
problems at all with it playing HD, but its just a frontend, so its not 
doing any of the DB or recording stuff the backend does.

My point is this, you can have some pretty old hardware playing HD. It 
helps a good bit if the backend and frontend are separated. Going 
gigabyte might help too, though my runs fine on 10/100.

I think any new system you buy today should be fine playing HD stuff as 
long as you get a good bit of RAM and a decent Nvidia card.

Mike