[mythtv-users] HD on SDTV playback question

Rod Smith mythtv at rodsbooks.com
Mon Feb 26 15:56:19 UTC 2007


On Sunday 25 February 2007 22:26, Gary Raposo wrote:
>
> I've got an
> original Asus Pundit (2.4GHz P4 with onboard SiS chipset driving its
> S-Video TV-out) configured as a SD frontend.  My backend is capturing
> HD (it's also my primary frontend driving an HD display).  I haven't
> had any success with smooth playback of HD content scaled down to SD
> on the Pundit and I assumed that the processor was simply not up to the
> task.
>
> Are you saying that if I go out and get myself a 5200FX based video
> card and turn on XvMC then I'm in business?  Remember that this video
> card would have to be a PCI based card... not AGP or that newfangled
> PCI-E.  Do you think this configuration could do it?

My understanding is that the PCI bus is adequate for HD playback *IF AND ONLY 
IF* you use XvMC. Given your CPU speed (2.4GHz) compared to mine (3.06GHz) 
and my experience, I'd say that you'll be very close to the edge of your 
frontend's capabilities playing back HD content scaled to NTSC resolutions 
with that system. At the very least, though, I'd expect you'd get something 
that's smoother than you get now. If it doesn't work, you could look into an 
additional CPU upgrade -- another 0.5 to 1GHz of CPU speed should get you 
there, and ~3GHz CPUs are pretty affordable these days, if your motherboard 
can take one that fast.

-- 
Rod Smith
http://www.rodsbooks.com


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