[mythtv-users] Which USB DVB-T Device should I choose, in a 266Mhz Linux Box

[st3v3.sm1th at gmail.com]

The early mini-itx systems did have mpeg acceleration, but
unfortunately the drivers ,weren't up to scratch, even on Windows

On 18/02/2008, Sarah Hayes <sarah at sarahhayes.is-a-geek.net> wrote:
> Steve Smith wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 18/02/2008, *Sarah Hayes* <sarah at sarahhayes.is-a-geek.net
> > <mailto:sarah at sarahhayes.is-a-geek.net>> wrote:
> >
> >     Guan Xuefei wrote:
> >     > Hello folks, I am new to MythTV, I have a old linux box (266MHz
> >     CPU),
> >     > I would like to choose a USB DVB-T box, and It should have the
> >     > hardware encoder because the poor CPU, I checked the mythtv website,
> >     > and it takes me to here,
> >     > http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T_USB_Devices, a lot of
> >     > devices for me to choose, If anyone have ever use those devices,
> >     > please give me some advices. Thanks.
> >     >
> >     > Guan,
> >     Whilst, yes, DVB cards require very little to no CPU overhead, I'd be
> >     dubious of using a USB one on such a beastie.
> >
> >     A lot of them I've encountered seem to be USB2 not USB1 or 1.1 (and
> >     yes, I've encountered old boards that were pre-usb spec with what
> >     amounts to the USB equivalent of early pre-N on them... i.e. nowt
> >     worked
> >     properly with anyone else's stuff), backwards compatibility is one
> >     thing
> >     but volume of data another.  I'm also dubious because USB devices do
> >     seem to take a hit on the CPU and well, you'll have the data stream
> >     being written to the disk; can it cope?
> >
> >     A good question to ask is "How much throughput does a disk need to
> >     write
> >     an mpeg2/whatever it appears as stream?" and compare the average
> >     against
> >     a hdparm -tT /dev/hda if the result is higher you're ok, if not,
> >     you'll
> >     possibly be dropping frames on recording.
> >
> >     Is this little machine going to be an "all-in-one"?  If so keep in
> >     mind
> >     that MySQL will be running on it and both the frontend and backend
> >     programs, so you might want to max the memory on the system; which is
> >     probably PC100/133 SDRAM and thus dirt cheap.  Being an older board it
> >     probably won't take all that much so not an expensive proposition :)
> >
> >     Would it work?  Probably.  Would it be a good long term solution?
> >     Probably not, but handy for figuring out if MythTV is for you and then
> >     throwing bigger (but not necessarily cutting edge) hardware at it,
> >     say a
> >     PIII or early P4 for both recording and perfect playback :)
> >
> >     Sarah
> >
> >     _______________________________________________
> >     mythtv-users mailing list
> >     mythtv-users at mythtv.org <mailto:mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
> >     http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> >
> >
> > A 266Mhz machine could make an OK Mythbox backend with the addition of
> > a MediaMVP to do the playback.
> > (I used to run GBPVR on an early 800mhz mini-itx which was incapable
> > of playing mpeg2 so I used that as the recorder and MediaMVP as my
> > playback device).
> >
> > Though as others have suggested I'd go for a PCI based DVB-T device as
> > the USB solution may place too much load on the CPU (+ you'd probably
> > need a USB2 card anyway).
> >
> > So nip on over to ebay and pick yourself a second hand MVP....
> > or if you want an all in one box solution, ditch the PII machine and
> > buy a second hand P3/P4/Athlon etc
> > (P3 700mhz+ is sufficient for SD, some have used less!)
> >
> Odd, I thought all the early EPIA's had mpeg2 acceleration with the
> right patches to mplayer?
>
> Before splunking for the PCI card I'd double check it'll work in the PCI
> slots; again compatibility between differing revisions of the PCI spec
> can be hit & miss (found that out the hard way myself).  But a squint at
> the manual or googling the chipset will quickly sort that out that question.
>
> Sarah
>
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