<html>
<head>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 10 (filtered)">
<style>
<!--
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
span.EmailStyle17
{font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
</head>
<body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple>
<div class=Section1>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>I’m probably nuts, but I went ahead and bought an Asus
Digimatrix after seeing one in a store and really liking the form factor. So I
now have the probably quite significant challenge of getting MythTV running on
it.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>I’ll post my results here, but thought I’d start
off by commenting on the windows software that comes with it. The software isn’t
bad, but has one significant flaw: the Titan TV guide is not well integrated
into the TV recording scheduler. This is sufficiently aggravating that I can’t
see this product really being able to take on MCE, TiVo, Myth or Freevo. Even
my ATI All-in-Wonder did better with Gem GuidePlus. Maybe I just didn’t
set up the TitanTV stuff properly but there really didn’t seem to be much
to set up.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Incidentally the software is made by Intervideo, and is probably
a fairly generic product that gets bundled by other TV card OEMs.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Recording quality seems okay. I saw one review which criticized
the tuner, but to me it seemed fine, compared with others I have recently used,
like a Hauppauge 250 and an AverTV Studio (I didn’t get to do a
side-by-side compare but from memory they seemed pretty equivalent). The tuner
seems capable (although I had no way to test for sure) of handling NTSC, PAL
and SECAM – if so, this is quite a boon for anyone who may be thinking of
relocating countries!</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>When recording in best quality, with playback running behind,
CPU usage was about 63% - this is with a 2.4GHz P3 and 512Mb RAM. CPU
temperature went up from the low 40s to 53 degrees (Cellcius, of course).</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>It not only isn’t a Windows MCE but fails to meet the
bar in one respect; MCE requires DXVA driver support for de-interlacing and the
driver that comes with it does not support that. So anyone hoping to somehow
get Windows MCE on it is unlikely to have success. </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>One thing I didn’t like is the DVD drive –
simply because it is a slimiline/laptop style, and so doesn’t eject
properly and feels quite fragile when inserting and removing discs (which must
be clicked into place).</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>It looks great though, and I can’t hear it which is
nice.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>More to follow. Wish me luck. If I can’t get Myth
working on it it’s going on eBay; hopefully I won’t lose too much
in this experiment (apart from lots of time perhaps). Time to blow the Windows
install with Knoppix and start the long march…</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Gramster</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>