On 3/26/08, <b class="gmail_sendername">Roger Heflin</b> <<a href="mailto:rogerheflin@gmail.com">rogerheflin@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Mary Strimel wrote:<br> > hello mythfolk,<br> > I have put a pchdtv-5500 into my myth box which consists of a 4-years old<br> > AMD Athlon 64 (I think the CPU is rated at 800 mhz).<br> ><br> > In theory, my box should be capable of recording from this card in HD. In<br>
> fact PCHDTV minimum specs say 400 mhz pentium would be enough.<br> ><br> > As for playback, I downloaded an HD testfile - I forgot from where, it<br> > appeared to be a computer-animated short film that my computer played back<br>
> in beautiful widescreen HD with no problems. My video card is a nvidia<br> > fx-5200.<br> ><br> > So how come, when I try to record QAM from Comcast cable on this card, the<br> > results are unwatchable, blocky and hesitating to the point where it barely<br>
> looks like tv? (I think it is a resource problem, since when there is a<br> > still frame or very little movement, the blockiness reduces somewhat). I<br> > have tried to record, then stop and watch (so as not to be taping and<br>
> playback simultaneously). I have also tried XVMC playback, which seems to<br> > make no discernible difference in the results.<br> ><br> > Please try to resist telling me not to buy the pchdtv-5500, 'cause I think<br>
> it's too late to return :) Could it be that the specs on the PCHDTV site<br> > are just plain wrong? Seems more likely I am doing something wrong.<br> ><br> > cheers,<br> > Mary<br> <br> <br>How fast is your machine and how much ram do you have? Recording will work<br>
fine on a 400Mhz machine, playback of HD will not work on that slow of box, I<br> *think* that playback of HD-1080i would require quite a bit more.<br> <br> My experience is that for playback you will need something quite a bit faster,<br>
but this also depends on the resolution of what you are trying to playback,<br> 1920x1080 takes quite a bit more than 1280x720 does, what was the resolution of<br> the file that worked, and what was the resolution of the file that failed?<br>
<br><br>
Roger<br> <br><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>
Thank you for the quick reply. My machine has 1 GB of RAM.
Running "cat /proc/cpu" reports an AMD Athlon64 at 800 mhz. A
couple of follow up questions: <br>
<br>
- For recording from QAM / digital cable, can I set a lower
resolution in the Mythtv recording profiles, and those settings will
actually "take"? I had no idea ... I thought I was stuck with
whatever stream they were transmitting.<br>
<br>
- I don't know the resolution of the test file , although it was
definitely gorgeous, much clearer than SD and played flawlessly.
Is there a tool to find out the resolution of that file? Is it
possible that a computer animated film would be easier to for my cpu to
play than live action TV?<br>
<br>
Mary<br>