[mythtv-users] New to Myth, comments/questions (Mac FE, distributed setup w/ servers and FE machines)

Seth Hettich sjh at zorak.net
Thu Jan 4 22:28:16 UTC 2007


On 1/4/07, Brett Kosinski <fancypantalons at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Also, the video quality seems to be a fair bit worse then the tivo.
> > Right now I'm not doing an apples to apples comparison (since the Tivo
> > source is a satellite box and the myth input is the pc3000).  But is
> > that expected?  What kind of video quality should I expect with a mac
> > mini doing output via s-video?  Will output via DVI be much better
> > (for NTSC video)?
>
> How are you capturing?  I pull in S-Video from my DSTB into a PVR-150,
> capturing at 720x480 with an average bitrage of 4500 and a peak of 6000, and
> it loooks as good as going straight into the TV (IMHO).

Right now just the pc3000 (I'm going to go pick up a PVR-150 this
weekend if I can), so the input is a line from the antenna on the
roof.


> > When I start to watch a show (ie select it from the recorded shows) I
> > get about 10-15 sec of a black screen before the playback starts.  Is
> > that normal?
>
> On pre-recorded??  Wow, that seems very slow.  I see *maybe* 3-5 seconds.
> I'd bet there's something wrong with your setup... maybe there's something
> telling in the frontend or backend logs?

Would having the FE be on another machine cause this sort of delay?

> > In general, does my plan (big server w/ 3 tuners, mac minis as FE
> > machines, etc) seem like a realistic plan to get a nice easy to use
> > home AV system?
> >
>
> Seems perfectly reasonable to me.  As you note, if you want HD, you'll
> likely need more horsepower on the frontend, but since I'm only running SD,
> I can't really help you there. :)


Yeah, I think I'll need at least a 1.8Ghz mini to deal with HD (I
borrowed the 1.5 from a friend to try it out).

-Seth


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