[mythtv-users] Help creating a Not a Frequently Asked Questions page?

[Friedrich Clausen]

Hello,

Sorry for top-posting but I just wish to say that these questions and
answers are a great idea and should go on the Wiki. Not sure about the
name of "NOTAFAQ", maybe something like a "Before You Start" Wiki page
but the name is not the big issue. I think there are valid points on
the QA list that need to get out to people investigating a potential
MythTV system.

Cheers,

Fred.

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 1:19 AM, Dan Ritter <dsr-myth at tao.merseine.nu> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 12:10:48AM +0200, Kent Boortz wrote:
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Q: Do I need hardware compression? In what situations will I *not* need it?
>>
>> In most situations, you need hardware compression. In a very simple setup
>> you can get away without it, and let the CPU do the job for you. [Not much
>> of an answer.....]
>
> If you are recording from an analog source, you can use a
> software encoding tuner which uses your CPU. It's very cheap.
> You can also use a hardware encoding tuner, which won't load
> your CPU much -- likely about 2%. If you have (or want) multiple
> tuners, that's the way to go.
>
> If you are recording from a digital source, the question is
> meaningless. You can do a software transcode later to move the
> video into a different format (DVD, AVI, DIVX, for your iPOD,
> etc.)
>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Q: I want to have 4 tuners, what is the best option, PCI or external
>>    tuners with USB?
>>
>> >From a compatibility standpoint, expected trouble.....
>>
>> CPU load.......
>>
>> Cost.......
>>
>> [Yes, I want to know?]
>
> USB and ethernet-attached tuners are usually the easiest to set
> up. That said, there's not that much to do for PCI tuners, and
> the difficulties in FireWire tuners are mostly your cable
> company's fault.
>
> If you are using a PCI tuner, it's probably best to avoid a
> VIA-based motherboard.
>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Q: Can I connect one or more external USB TV dongles to an USB hub?
>
> Yes, but you'll need to watch the overall bandwidth of that
> connection. USB isn't as good as FireWire at allocating
> bandwidth fairly, which is one of the reasons that new
> motherboards often have six or ten or a dozen USB ports.
>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Q: In practice, how many cards/channels can I record at the same time on
>>    one single back-end?
>>
>> The DVB-T stream is already compressed, so storing it is just about PCI/USB
>> bandwidth and how fast you can store it on disk. As a rule of thumb....
>
> As a rule of thumb, one disk is good for two streams. If you
> have four disks, you can probably record 6-7 programs and watch
> another one.
>
> Analog non-compressing tuners will chew up more CPU time than
> disk bandwidth.
>
> -dsr-
>
> --
> http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr/eula.html is hereby incorporated by reference.
>
> You can't defend freedom by getting rid of it.
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