[mythtv-users] PCI FX5200 and HD - too much for PCI?

[Matthew Schroeder]

I had some concerns regarding my choice of a PCI (not PCI-E) NVidia 5200 
card to utilize the S-Video output.
 From what I have been reading lately it would appear that the PCI bus 
itself it not up to the task of HD programming.

I have an Air2PC card (ebay special) which I have been testing the past few 
days with SD content.  So far everything is working very well.

My motherboard is an Intel OEM board with *no* AGP or PCI-E slots.  The CPU 
is a Northwood 2.2GHz.  Currently running with 1024MB of PC2700 SDRAM.

Still using the onboard video (still testing) but was thinking of a FX5200 
PCI to output via S-Video to a regular television.

There was some mention of using the scaling capability of X to shrink the 
HD resolution down to something more manageable, like 1024x768 or 800x600 
on the fly.  I'm wondering if this woudl allow LiveTV functionality?

The PCI version should be able to display my Xvid/MPEG-1 movies as well as 
DVD with little trouble.  This will account for at least 85-90% of the 
usage of my box.

Could anybody here site come similar examples or any workarounds to get the 
HD content that was recorded to display on less-than-stellar 
equipment?  I'm not above transcoding, but I would like to see how much I 
can wring out of this system before it comes to that.