[mythtv-users] Upgrading or replacing my frontend hardware?

[Brad Templeton]

On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 01:47:46PM -0700, Brad Templeton wrote:
> My trusty SFF frontend&slave, an Aopen XC Cube with a 3ghz Pentium 4 and an
> Nvidia 6200 AGP video card is getting a bit long in the tooth.  It still
> works, but feels sluggish compared to modern machines, and it can't play
> many of the h264 HD videos I come upon without skipping a bit.
> 
> So I see a few options and wonder what people's thinking on the routes
> available today are.   There are no geforce 8 and above cards for AGP, though
> they can be had for PCI.   To use PCI I would have to remove the pvr-150 card
> in the PCI slot, but that's not so bad because there's not much left on 
> analog cable, and the firewire port does the recording from the cable box.
> 
> You can't really get new motherboards for SFF systems.  This mobo has SATA
> and firewire and two spdifs which is good, but only older ddr and agp.
> 
> So options include:
> 
> a)    Give this system more life with a PCI based geforce 8400 or 9400 video
>         card.  In theory, I should be able to play all those videos quite
>         nicely with VDPAU, right?   There does not seem to be a PCI card with
>         HDMI output but I can survive doing audio on its own wire.
> 
> b)    Buy a micro-atx case and mobo, possibly with integrated geforce 8200 or
>       9300 chipset, do vdpau from onboard video -- small and low power.  Toss
>       on a cheap core 2 duo.
> 
> c)    As above, but forget about onboard video, get a pci-e slot and put on
>       a dedicated but low-power video card.
> 
> d)    Buy another SFF barebones -- small and light and low power and usually
>       pretty quiet.   But no upgrade ability, again.  Note that firewire
>       is a must.
> 
> 
> I am intereted in current popular choices.  If it works well I can just
> drop in my old drive and Jaunty should largely recognize the new hardware
> and hit the ground running.

Let me add that going with onboard video would mean no use of the advanced 2x
deinterlacer, though I would be interested to hear how well people do at
the Temporal 2x mode on the motherboard based video chips.  The wiki page
is a little light on details here, with some reports of people only using
simpler deinterlacers on 1080i.   

You can get a geforce 9500 with a PCI interface.  Anybody tried this?  The
wiki has one report of "minimal tearing" on a 9500gt, presumably on pci-e,
with hope for fixing it.  Anybody have a report from a 9500 on PCI?  The 9500
is supposed to match the 8600 in performance.

Finally, how big is the difference between Temporal 2x and Advanced 2x in terms
of moving video quality?   It it worth going to a dedicated video card just
to be sure I can get an 8600 or 9600 card?