[mythtv-users] Upgrading an ancient box

[Karl Newman]

On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Kristo Kriechbaum <klk+mythtv at kajisti.org>
wrote:

>
> I plan to get a SSD for the OS and DB, and I have a newer 3 TB drive to
> use for recordings.  I could use some suggestions on
> motherboard/cpu/graphics.  I've generally used Nvidia cards in the past and
> have been quite happy with them.  I would prefer to have a graphics
> solution where most if not all of the decoding gets offloaded.
>

The general sense on this list is that nVidia is still the king for video
quality, especially for deinterlacing. Unfortunately their model numbering
doesn't make it easy to know which cards will have the best features &
performance. Someone will have to clarify for me, because I'm not an nVidia
expert, but I think the x30 cards will definitely work (i.e., 430 or 630),
x20 cards might be adequate, but x10 cards are underpowered.

There are other options for graphics, however. Intel built-in graphics can
use VAAPI for offloading and the results can be satisfactory, depending on
your sensitivity to the video quality (it's fine for me). Just recently AMD
has become a more viable option with VDPAU enabled through the open-source
drivers. I don't know about its quality but my sense is that it's between
Intel and nVidia.

I will also probably need some help getting the DB moved over to the new
> system.  I haven't been reading this list for a while, but I recall that
> 0.24 is old enough that newer versions don't even know how to upgrade the
> DB.
>
> Actually I think you're in luck with that. I think anything before 0.24
can't be upgraded directly to 0.27+ but you should be okay. Just make sure
you backup and restore the database using the provided scripts (
mythconverg_backup.pl and mythconverg_restore.pl) and run mythtv-setup to
upgrade the database, before starting any other myth programs (especially
mythbackend).

Note that if you're in the U.S. and have enjoyed the commercial flagging,
0.24 was about when it was at its best. Some changes in 0.25+ have
decreased its effectiveness, although there was some work by a user
recently (faginbagin I think) to restore it somewhat. I think those
improvements exist only as patches right now, though.

Sincerely,

Karl
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20150302/deb0a05c/attachment.html>