[mythtv-users] HD, the holy grail...

[jk-myth at kleeh.com]

> Some people have better luck that others, for whatever reason... A
> 2.8GHz Xeon should be more than able to do 1080i. Hell, I had an
> athlon xp 1800 at one point that could almost do it, as well as a
> 1.5GHz core solo mac mini I was toying with a few days ago that could
> almost do it. I have an athlon xp 2600 and an athlon 64 2900 that can
> do 720p and 1080i playback without a problem. My current Athlon 64
> 3500 frontend gets no more than ~40% busy playing back 1080i
> material, and the clock speed rarely ramps up above 1GHz.

I'm afraid I'm one of the people with bad luck ;) I have a very similar
(frontend only) system: Athlon 64 3500, 6200 PCI-X, 1GB DDR-400.  When I
watch HD my processor is pegged and I notice the video is a little jerky. 
I'm using the Nvidia proprietary drivers - I've tried a half-dozen
different versions.  XvMC lowers the processor utilization but causes
other issues with sound that make it unusable.  Besides a 3500+ should be
enough even w/o XvMC correct?

The only thing I have close to a theory is that my TV is a flat-panel -
nvidia detects its native resolution of 1366x768 - and mythtv uses the
native resolution for both 1080i & 720p.  Perhaps the additional burden of
rescaling is the cause of some of my problems.  I've been trying to
configure xorg to output 1080i or 720p and forgo the rescaling but I
haven't figured out the right modlines and override options yet.  I'm
curious if anyone thinks my rescaling theory is valid or just a dead-end.

Jason