[mythtv] Box Processor Limits

[Jeff McDonald]

From:  http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html
 
MythTV is a software video encoder, which means that it uses a fairly
generic "dumb" video capture card to get frames of video, encodes them
using the CPU on your motherboard and writes them to disk. High-end
video capture cards and devices like the Tivo and RePlay have dedicated
encoder chips which use specialized hardware to convert the video stream
to the MPEG-2 format without using the motherboard CPU. The main CPU has
the responsibility of running the Operating System and reading and
writing the encoded frames to the disk. These tasks have fairly low CPU
requirements compared to encoding video, which is why a device like a
Series 1 Tivo can run with only 16MB of RAM and a 54Mhz CPU.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-dev-bounces at snowman.net
[mailto:mythtv-dev-bounces at snowman.net] On Behalf Of Jarret R
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 8:01 PM
To: MythTV
Subject: [mythtv] Box Processor Limits


I was reading the Myth site and was slightly confused by the figures. On
the site it says that high quality takes 50-60% of an Athlon 1800+. The
TiVo only has a twenty-something megahertz processor in it and it can
encode etc without problems. Which process is taking all the CPU time?
Is it the encoding scheme used? I decided to build a myth box, and we
are trying to figure out if the Duron 650 I have will work or if I
should use the Athlon 1100 currently in my extra box. Is the problem
when encoding and decoding at the same time?
 
Sorry for the newbie questions ;)
 
 
Thanks,
Jarret Raim

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