[mythtv-users] dilemma PVR-350-out/nvdia out

[Nick Morrott]

On 07/03/07, Bart Coninckx <bart.coninckx at telenet.be> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently building two Mythboxes on two recent Asus Pundits. One has a ATI
> card, the other an Nvidia card. Both also have PVR-350 cards.
>
> They will be used for virtually all MytTV functionalities: TV, DVD, MythGame
> etc.
>
> For the TV part I understand from reading other posts that for picture quality
> nothing seems to beat running X server on the PVR-350.
>
> For games and DVD though, it seems that running X on an Nvidia is the optimal
> situation CPU-wise, also because of XvMC.
>
> I already added a Nvidia card to the Pundit with the ATI card, but the main
> dilemma is know: using X on a PVR-350 and risking high CPU for xmame and DVD
> playing or using X on the Nvideas and dealing with lower quality TV-out. Both
> things are important.

One option is to build a homebrew VGA->RGB SCART cable (see
http://ryoandr.free.fr/english.html) which will give you high quality
video output from your ATI video card and allow you to use the
accelerated video and OpenGL support from the radeon video driver.

When I first built a MythTV box (in '04) I used my PVR-350 for video
output (and grinned) because the ATI drivers for my Pundit-R had
broken TV-Out support. As I began to use the box for more features I
began to use TV-Out (via S-Video) once the ATI fglrx driver was fixed.
I then built a cheap VGA-SCART cable and now have the best of all
worlds, as far as I can tell. I use the OSS radeon driver which has Xv
support, and do not use HDTV at all (UK).

XvMC only becomes an issue when using HDTV - which would also rule out
using the PVR-350 for output as its framebuffer is fixed to 720x576 in
PAL-land (720x480 for NTSC).

If I were building a box dedicated to SDTV and already had a PVR-350,
I would be tempted to use it. However, as video quality can be
subjective, I would try out your systems using both the PVR and your
video cards, and see how you feel with the quality from each.

Nick
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