[mythtv-users] Speed and Hardware MPEG card choice
papenfuss at juneau.me.vt.edu
papenfuss at juneau.me.vt.edu
Wed Dec 3 08:19:18 EST 2003
Hello all. I'm currently arguing with a dual OC'd Celeron 300->450
moldy old machine for my mythtv box. I was hoping that the dual CPU would make
it useable enough for mythtv, but it's awfully marginal. Recording with RTJPEG
(170 quality) at 352x480 takes about 90-95% of the CPU, and playing at the same
time takes most of the other:
PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME CPU COMMAND
2994 root 9 0 46656 37M 7396 R 92.9 9.9 1:29 1 mythbackend
3281 mythtv 9 0 33984 33M 18868 S 39.5 8.8 0:34 1 mythfrontend
3137 root 11 0 279M 22M 12420 S 29.4 6.0 2:47 1 X
SO, rather than spend money on a new machine, I figure I can get more
utility out of a hardware MPEG card. I thought the choice was simple
(PVR-250), but now with the AverMedia M179 card, I'm not so sure. With the
newest patch for ivtv supposedly supporting sound, it seems a lot more
interesting. Also, since AverMedia is somewhat supportive of the open source
crowd (provided some hardware specs), I'd prefer to support them. It doesn't
have a remote or input for one like the hauppauge, right? How about
composite/svideo in in addition to the tuner? Looks like it might but the
specs on the avermedia homepage are a bit vague, saying "input is - 75 Ohm
Coaxial TV Antenna". I don't want it if I can't record from a digital cable
box or VHS tape.
Does this seem like a reasonable setup? Will offloading the encoding
to the vid card make the dually celeron a bit more snappy on the channel
changing, etc?
Thanks for any advice,
-Cory
--
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