[mythtv-users] Hardware advice requested.

Travis Tabbal travis at tabbal.net
Tue Jan 27 15:21:27 UTC 2009


On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 7:58 AM, Richard Shaw <hobbes1069 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 8:28 AM,  <Jens.Peder.Terjesen at devoteam.com>
> wrote:
>
> That's interesting. The original post about VDPAU said a 9xxx card was
> required for VC-1...
>
> http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=123091



That post says:

VC-1 support in NVIDIA's VDPAU implementation currently requires GeForce
9300 GS, GeForce 9200M GS, GeForce 9300M GS, or GeForce 9300M GS.

-----------

They really do mean that, not "a 9xxx card". Read the mplayer/VDPAU thread.
It seems that supported cards are somewhat rare and it's hard to know if
what you get will work for VC-1/VDPAU. I have yet to encounter much VC-1
encoded video, even online, so I haven't really seen a need to bother with
it. If I do, and I really must play it, I suppose I'll transcode. Hopefully
NVidia will get better support for it in the future. Even a partial offload
would help. At the very least, it would be nice to be able to tell BEFORE I
buy the card if it's supported.

For my frontend, I did the following a lot cheaper than your wishlist.

Asus mobo, onboard video:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131318

Case, HTPC style:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121068

I used an X2 3800+ I had laying around for the CPU. Works fine for MPEG2
ATSC recordings in software, but I needed VDPAU for h264 HD stuff. I also
used 2GB of RAM, and dedicated 512M of it to video for VDPAU. I also boot
from an 8GB flash stick, so no HD in this machine. I did install a DVD-RW I
don't really use for much.

If you go this route, note that the IDE interface is blocked and unusable.
Asus mounted it horizontal to the board and there is a drive cage bracket
right in front of it. Not a big loss with SATA being so cheap. I would also
recomend SATA cables with right-angle plugs on one side for the DVD drive as
it's a little close to the CPU heatsink. Mine wouldn't have hit the plugs,
but the right-angle ones leave a little more space.
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