[mythtv-users] minimum specs for PCHDTV-5500?

[Tom Dexter]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 2:46 PM, Mary Strimel <mary.strimel at gmail.com> wrote:
> hello mythfolk,
>  I have put a pchdtv-5500 into my myth box which consists of a 4-years old
> AMD Athlon 64 (I think the CPU is rated at 800 mhz).
>
>  In theory, my box should be capable of recording from this card in HD.  In
> fact PCHDTV minimum specs say 400 mhz pentium would be enough.
>
>  As for playback, I downloaded an HD testfile - I forgot from where, it
> appeared to be a computer-animated short film that my computer played back
> in beautiful widescreen HD with no problems.  My video card is a nvidia
> fx-5200.
>
>  So how come, when I try to record QAM from Comcast cable on this card, the
> results are unwatchable, blocky and hesitating to the point where it barely
> looks like tv?  (I think it is a resource problem, since when there is a
> still frame or very little movement, the blockiness reduces somewhat).  I
> have tried to record, then stop and watch (so as not to be taping and
> playback simultaneously).  I have also tried XVMC playback, which seems to
> make no discernible difference in the results.
>
>  Please try to resist telling me not to buy the pchdtv-5500, 'cause I think
> it's too late to return :)  Could it be that the specs on the PCHDTV site
> are just plain wrong?  Seems more likely I am doing something wrong.
>
>  cheers,
>  Mary
>
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>

Just to be clear, recording digital stations uses almost no CPU at all
as it's basically just writing the mpeg stream directly to disk.
That's all I'm doing on my backend (in my case OTA broadcast digital
stations).  When all three of my hd-5500 cards are recording the CPU
barely hits 2%.  I'm not too familiar with recording analog stations,
but I do know that the recording application needs to encode it to
mpeg...that as well as playback have nothing to do with the hd-5500
itself.

You're problems may be encoding settings...others here can probably
help more with that.

Tom