Sorry to semi-hijack, but I'm in a kinda similar situation. I've got an Athlon XP 1800+ box with 3/4 gig of memory and a 4x AGP slot. Right now I'm just using it as a backend to capture SD via a PVR-250 card. I'm using an XBox as a remote frontend, via a component video adapter hooked up to my HD TV. Works like a charm, couldn't be happier, but...
<br><br>At the end of the month I'll be getting a DTC-62xx (I think) from RCN here in Boston. I'd like to capture via the Firewire port and watch it on my TV, but I understand that the XBox probably doesn't have the horsepower to decode and display a 1080i signal. Is there a video card with component video outputs that I can drop into the 4x AGP slot on my mobo that will be able to render a 1080i video stream?
<br><br>I've heard people mention that some Nvidia 6200-based cards come with a component-out dongle and they work well for HD video, but all the cards I've seen say AGP 8x (or PCI-e). Would an AGP 8x Nvidia 6200 card even work in a 4x AGP slot, or would the video kinda suck if the card stepped itself down to AGP 4x?
<br><br>-Jon<br><br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 1/10/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael T. Dean</b> <<a href="mailto:mtdean@thirdcontact.com">mtdean@thirdcontact.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
N Dugas wrote:<br><br>>Steve Adeff wrote:<br>><br>><br>>>On Monday 09 January 2006 14:00, N Dugas wrote:<br>>><br>>>>After having Myth running for about 6 months, I and thinking of changing<br>
>>>how I have it set up. Right now, both the front and back ends are on<br>>>>the same box which has a PVR-350 tuner. What I'd like to do is this:<br>>>><br>>>>Make my current Myth box a backend only but also add a firewire
<br>>>>connection to my DCT-6412. I then plan on setting up another Myth box<br>>>>as a frontend only. My understanding is that the frontend has lower HW<br>>>>requirements.<br>>>><br>
>>>Hardware config for my current Myth box (to become my backend) is:<br>>>><br>>>>Mobo: A7N8X-E Deluxe<br>>>>CPU: Athlon XP 3000<br>>>>RAM: 1G Dual DDR<br>>>>Video: ATI Radeon 9550 w/ 256M
<br>>>>Disk: Seagate 200G<br>>>>Lan: D-LINK DWL-G520 Wireless NIC<br>>>>Connected to my 26" Samsung LCD HDTV.<br>>>><br>>>>I have at my disposal (to use/swap into this box if needed, based on
<br>>>>feedback):<br>>>>GeForce FX5500 w/ 256M<br>>>>Seagate 200G<br>>>>Extra 512M Dual DDR stick<br>>>><br>>>>For my new frontend:<br>>>>Mobo: MSI KT4V-L<br>
>>>CPU: Athlon XP 1800<br>>>>RAM: 512M<br>>>>Video: Whatever is left, ATI Radeon 9550 or ATI Radeon 9550<br>>>>Disk: Seagate 200G<br>>>>Lan: D-LINK DWL-G520 Wireless NIC<br>>>>
<br>>>><br>>>>Will this work?<br>>>><br>>>Are you planning on doing HD? If not, your current BE/FE machine is more than<br>>>adequate to handle the PVR350 and DCT6412.<br>>><br>
>I'm hoping to do HD since I've got a handful of HD chanels. I've been<br>>hearing that the Nvidia card should be able to do it if I enable XvMC.<br>><br>><br>ATI's drivers don't support XvMC. Rumor has it they're "working on it"
<br>(and have been for literally years). So, go with NVIDIA on the frontend.<br><br>Also, take Fred's advice--the frontend needs to be the more powerful<br>system (especially if doing HDTV). If you're using hardware encoders
<br>for SDTV (i.e. Hauppauge PVR-x50's) or digital video capture cards (i.e.<br>DVB or ATSC (US HDTV)), the backend just has to dump data to disk. The<br>commflagging and transcoding are the most processor-intensive parts on
<br>the backend but don't have to be done in real-time. Also, you can have<br>your other Myth machine (that you use as the frontend) do some/all of<br>the commflagging/transcoding.<br><br>Also, my dedicated backend has a 2MB PCI graphics card in it. I may go
<br>up to a spare MX440 just so I can use the AGP port and free up a PCI<br>slot (stupid doesn't-support-AGP-1X motherboard won't let me use my Riva<br>TNT 8MB). A 9550 is a bit of a waste of a video card on a backend, so
<br>if you have a cheaper card that fits the board, you can save the 9550<br>for a different system. (I don't even start X on my backend.)<br><br>Mike<br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list
<br><a href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">mythtv-users@mythtv.org</a><br><a href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users">http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br></blockquote></div>
<br>