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

[Dan Ritter]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 03:54:32PM -0400, Mary Strimel wrote:
> Thank you for the quick reply.  My machine has 1 GB of RAM.  Running "cat
> /proc/cpu" reports an AMD Athlon64 at 800 mhz.  A couple of follow up
> questions:

That's just not going to be fast enough for a 720P or 1080i
MPEG2.

> -  For recording from QAM / digital cable, can I set a lower resolution in
> the Mythtv recording profiles, and those settings will actually "take"?  I
> had no idea ... I thought I was stuck with whatever stream they were
> transmitting.

No, you are correct -- you are stuck. HOWEVER -- not every
program is necessarily sent at the same resolution, nor is every
ATSC-channel necessarily high def. And FURTHERMORE -- you can
transcode those programs down to say, 720x480 and see if your
machine can play that. Transcoding can be made automatic, though
it will take a long time on this machine.

> - I don't know the resolution of the test file , although it was definitely
> gorgeous, much clearer than SD and played flawlessly.  Is there a tool to
> find out the resolution of that file? 

mplayer -identify -frames 0 -vc null -ao null -vo null filename

> Is it possible that a computer
> animated film would be easier to for my cpu to play than live action TV?

Yes, but it's unlikely to make a dramatic difference.

-dsr-

-- 
Restore our Constitutional rights.

http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr/eula.html is hereby incorporated by reference.