[mythtv-users] A paradigm shift is coming. Are you ready?

[William Munson]

Yeechang Lee wrote:
> For the past several years the benchmark for North American high
> definition (1080i MPEG-2 content recorded via FireWire or OTA at
> 7.5-8GB/hour)-capable MythTV frontend has been a Pentium 4 2.8-3.0GHz
> with an Nvidia 5200. Anything slower is asking for trouble.[1]
> Anything that meets this level of performance or better is in fine
> shape.
>
> This is about to change, thanks to two imminent developments:
>
> * The pending release of 0.21. The creation of an 0.21-fixes branch in
>   SVN is the latest sign that a final 0.21 is coming very, very soon.
> * The forthcoming Hauppauge capture device that encodes 1080p video
>   and S/PDIF audio to h.264.
>
> Let me use my frontend, a Pentium 4 Hypertransport-enabled 3.0GHz with
> an Nvidia 6200TC, to illustrate. 0.21 brings both a new, OpenGL-based
> video renderer and two new deinterlacers, Greedy and Yadif. My
> frontend is incapable of using the OpenGL renderer at all due to
> insufficient horsepower. Even with the Xv renderer, the Yadif (2X),
> Yadif, and Greedy (2X) deinterlacers are too much for my frontend;
> only Greedy works. Xv and the Bob (2X) deinterlacer still work
> wonderfully well in turning 1080i content into output for my 1080p
> panel, of course.
>
> The Hauppauge device is another story. I've been playing the 1080p
> h.264 videos at <URL:http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/> in the
> MythVideo internal player and the results aren't encouraging. Besides
> the lack of audio (Anyone know why?), most of the videos play with a
> brief pause every few seconds and accompaning "NVP: Waiting for
> prebuffer" messages in the mythfrontend log. Seeking is
> problematic. Some, like the Ducati and Barber of Seville clips, don't
> play at all. mplayer can play all the clips, properly handles the
> audio, and seeks better, but of course doesn't try to deinterlace by
> default; using -vf yadif=1 results in a flickering display and frame
> drops.
>
> I don't know if I need more CPU horsepower or GPU horsepower;
> <URL:http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/HD_Playback_Reports> implies
> CPU is more important, but a faster video card would surely help. As
> noted above Xv and Bob are quite satisfactory and I don't need the
> Hauppauge device, per se, because all my HD channels are available via
> FireWire. I strongly suspect, however, that many of those who are
> going to be jumping to 0.21 and the Hauppauge device in the coming
> weeks and months are going to be mightily disappointed without
> upgrading their previously-satisfactory setups first.
>
> [1] Anyone who here jumps up and says "I can use a way slower system
> with XvMC!" or "I can play 1080i with my MX440!" is both missing the
> point and misunderstanding the meaning of "benchmark."
>
>   
Such is life with a "older" system. Personally I have no problems 
playing that material with xvmc so your benchmark misses the mark in 
that your system is not fully optimized. Your choices, upgrade, dont 
play it or use all your options. Dual and quad core systems are getting 
cheaper by the week. Maybe its time to upgrade your system and/or 
perhaps go with a split front/back end combo. The minimum system is 
always going to increase with a package in active development.

On another note. 0.21 - Bring it on. Will be nice to not have to run SVN 
to get the features I need.

Cheers!
Bill