[mythtv-users] Re: Advice
Jarod C. Wilson
jcw at wilsonet.com
Tue Jul 29 11:14:48 EDT 2003
On Tuesday, Albert Santoni wrote:
>> 1. The cheapest tv-out solution I could find would be the chaintech
>> gf2
>> 440mx for around 50$ from newegg. which i've heard mentioned here a
>> few
>> times. is this card going to produce a decent tv-out signal? and is it
>> naturally supported by xv?
>
> All recent Nvidia cards give you good TV-out.
Not quite so. I had a cheap Jaton GF4MX that produced some very
noticeable moire patterns when outputting video via S-Video to my HDTV.
I replaced it with a Chaintech GF4MX, and problem gone.
>> 5. I've noticed some people saying they get mpeg2 glitches, or
>> glitchy
>> playback while using timeshifting via livetv. I'll be buying a new
>> harddrive from this box. would it make sense to opt for one of the
>> 8mb
>> cache drives, is that necessary, would it even help? which is
>> quieter,
>> seagate or wd?
>
> I'm not sure if this would make a difference. I'm going to have to say
> it's
> probably worth it to get a drive with an 8 MB cache... There's no
> point in
> buying old hardware. Oh, and I have a 120 gig Western Digital drive w/
> the 8
> MB cache running on my main machine, and it's super quiet!
That wouldn't really make much sense for a separate frontend. The
frontend needs hardly any drive capacity, very little HD throughput,
etc. Though if you run both frontend and backend on the same machine, a
8MB cache drive certainly wouldn't hurt. Not a bad option for the
backend alone either, but I wouldn't waste the money for such a drive
in a frontend-only machine.
>> 6. Would an athlon 800 running myth tv, with a wintv freestyle and a
>> gf2
>> produce quality anywhere near as close to the quality i'm getting
>> directly
>> from my cablebox now? assuming i'm using svideo in from the box, and
> svideo
>> back out.
>
> I would reasonable doubt you'd get BETTER video quality.
> A find a resolution of 480x480 just about matches my analog cable TV
> quality. That's what I run it at.
> You may have to try running at a higher resolution to match your
> digital
> cable quality. For this, your Athlon will be able to do it because of
> your
> PVR250 or Freestyle TV tuner. (I'm running an Athlon XP2000+... I can
> record
> two shows at once with non hardware mpeg2 tuners.)
I actually get better/cleaner video running through MythTV to my HDTV
than I do directly from my digital cable box, using a PVR-250 with the
capture settings at their highest. My system uses an Athlon XP 1700 and
runs both frontend and backend, but I have a spare Athlon 800 laying
around that I was about to try setting up as a frontend-only...
> I hope you're able to work with your configuration to successfully
> create a
> useable and enjoyable MythTV box
Me too!
-jcw
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