[mythtv-users] CPU usage during Playback of content from HD-PVR

[Brad DerManouelian]

On Aug 13, 2008, at 8:44 AM, Robert McNamara wrote:

> A 4400+, at 2.3 Ghz, is going to be woefully inadequate for playing  
> back anything but the lowest bitrate samples from the HD-PVR.  The  
> HD Playback reports page doesn't include any references to playing  
> back HD-PVR recorded content,

Check the link I provided again (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/HD_Playback_Reports 
) and look at the codec/container column. Most of them say h.264. This  
page is directly linked from the HD-PVR page (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/HDPVR 
) as a means to provide information about what processors are able to  
play back h.264 content from the HD-PVR.

> so I'm not sure which you meant from there.  The HD-PVR records h. 
> 264 without slices, which presently cannot be multithreaded or  
> offloaded in any way in Linux.  That is to say, you will be limited  
> to the oomph of a single 2.3 Ghz processor in Linux with the 4400+  
> while playing HD-PVR content.

I thought CoreAVC allowed multiple threads. Again, dshowserver is  
showing about 138% usage.

>
> To give some anecdotal evidence, the people who are able to more or  
> less play back the HD-PVR stuff without modification are doing so  
> with Core 2 Duos at 3.0 Ghz or higher.  Even then, it can be dicey.   
> The C2Ds are faster clock for clock than the AMDs, so the AMD clock  
> speed would need to be higher still.  You can get away with lower  
> processor by using things like CoreAVC, and there are substantial  
> improvements to libavcodec in the pipeline, but the short answer for  
> now is I wouldn't expect much success with that processor.  You can  
> try CoreAVC but it may still be a bit too slow.

Uhh.. I already said I'm using CoreAVC in my original post.