[mythtv-users] video card?

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 9 Nov 2021 16:36:30 -0500, you wrote:

>On 11/9/21 11:45 AM, John Pilkington wrote:
>> But obsolescence looms.  This list for the 495 series driver doesn't 
>> include GT730 or GT210, and support for 470 in individual distros may 
>> vary. 
>I would like to point out that the open source nouveau driver exists.  
>https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html
>
>It may, or may not, support your cards.  If I understand correctly, 
>support is better for pre-Maxwell cards, which is when NVIDIA started 
>requiring signed firmware.  Because of their active hostility to open 
>source drivers, it is generally recommended to avoid NVIDIA GPUs.
>
>
>While not discrete GPUs, Intel's Haswell and Skylake integrated graphics 
>have worked fine for me (with a 1080p TV).

The Nouveau drivers have historically not supported the Nvidia
features needed for MythTV properly.  I have not tried them with
MythTV for quite some time, so it is possible that has changed.  It is
likely that if you use only CPU decoding and you have a powerful
enough CPU, you would get good results.  The thing least likely to
work is 1080i video (either MPEG2 or H.264), as deinterlacing is very
CPU intensive.  If your normal TV is mostly 1080i, as it is in New
Zealand, it is very important that the deinterlacing is done perfectly
(at least for people like me who will see any defects).  Any Nvidia
card (using its proprietary drivers and VDPAU or NVDEC) will produce a
perfect result, with very low CPU use (and therefore lower power
bills).

For those people who have H.265 broadcasts, that needs even more
powerful CPUs to handle the decoding if done in the CPU.  But again,
any recent Nvidia card will handle it with ease.

I have recently had to replace my laptop, and the new one has Intel
graphics builtin (as well an Nvidia GT2060), so I should try it out
and see how well it handles our H.264 1080i TV.