[mythtv-users] What hardware do I need to be able to dual record using Comcast cable?

[Greg Woods]

On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 08:25 -0600, Brian Wood wrote:

> > 
> > My FE is a P4 3.0 and it is enough for playing HD (720p & 1080i), it is
> > JUST enough, so before you buy newer hardware first check. Also what you
> > can do is make your P4 be a BE only where a P4 is plenty and but new FE.
> 
> Do you have to use XvMC to get your 3Ghz. cpu to do HD?

I've got a similar setup, and yes, I do have to use XvMC to get HD
playback (from an HDHomerun) to work. I have a Hauppage HD-PVR box too
but I haven't tried using it yet (haven't had time to try reinstalling
Myth from source). It's on my list to try some of the HD-PVR clips that
are out there to see how they playback on my system. I also got much
better playback without sacrificing quality when I switched the X server
to 720p from 1080i, since that's what my TV actually is anyway. Prior to
that, I had lots of "prebuffering pause" problems and playback was
choppy. Bottom line: it can be done with a 3Ghz P4, but it takes a lot
of fiddling to make it work. I ended up trying several versions of the
Nvidia drivers before I found one that worked well; it was a royal pain
and took a lot of time to get right.

I have never gotten firewire (from a DCT-6400) to work reliably. Channel
changing works fine, so I know the device is properly detected and
configured. But recordings sometimes work and sometimes don't. When they
do, the quality is as good as the HDHomerun, but it's not reliable
enough to use in practice. Firewire is another thing that's a royal
pain. Some people have it working well, but there are so many variables
that it's a crap shoot as to whether it will work on your system.

So I'm wondering: what are people using that's better than a P4? Do you
have to go to a 64 bit processor?

--Greg