[mythtv-users] Re: Advice

[Jason Schloer]

I actually ran into a nasty moiré pattern when I finally hooked up
S-Video last night instead of composite(I'm running a Verto GF4). Anyway
setting the VideoStandard(or something like that) option in my
XF86Config to SVIDEO and rebooting did away with it totally. Not sure if
it's the same thing you ran into, but thought I'd mention it. S-Video
looks much nicer. 

Jason Schloer

-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces at snowman.net
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at snowman.net] On Behalf Of Jarod C. Wilson
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 1:15 PM
To: mythtv-users at snowman.net
Subject: [mythtv-users] Re: Advice

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