[mythtv-users] MythTV Frontend

Joseph Fry joe at thefrys.com
Thu Feb 28 22:03:11 UTC 2013


>
>
>>> Any Pentium 4 2.8GHz or better should have no trouble playing US
>>> Broadcast HD streams using CPU alone.  And if you want you can always make
>>> it even better with a cheap NVIDIA card (say a used GT520) and still put a
>>> single system together for under $100.
>>>
>>
>> I'd love to know where you could find a P4 these days, and one that will
>> take a PCIe nvidia graphic card...
>>
>
> What do you mean... it's easy to find used P4 systems... and most LGA755
> motherboards had PCIe slots.  The Pentium 4 was around for a long time,
> especially if you include the Pentium D (which was just a dual core P4
> chip).  They were releasing new models from 2000 to 2008, and selling at
> retail until 2010 or so when just about every vendor finally switched to
> Core processors.
>

Wow... responding to myself twice in one thread.  I did a bit of digging,
and realized I was wrong, the last Pentium 4 core (aka Netburst
Architecture) based processor was the Celeron D 365 in 2007.  However I am
still pretty sure that OEM's used P4 processors into 2010 on some models.
 That was around the point where Core processors were able to outperform
the P4 on single threaded apps.

Anyway, I have evidence here at home that a P4 3GHz is plenty fast enough
to play MPEG2 encoded 1080i or 720p video... I am able to play most h264
encodes up to 1080i, and some 1080p encodes, but it is
highly dependent upon the bitrate.

With VDPAU, it will smoke any Atom based build... but for an occasional use
system (kids use it to watch cartoons) with a 20" monitor, it wasn't worth
leaving it in there.  I moved the card to the new family room frontend
where it sees a lot heavier use.
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