[mythtv-users] HDTV/CPU survey

[John Patrick Poet]

I have seen a few people with Pentium4 processor report that they are
happy with the playback of HDTV material.
 
I, however, have not seen a single "success" report from an Athlon user.
 
Is anyone getting acceptable HDTV playback under Myth, with an Athlon
processor?  If so, what speed, etc?
 
I am personally using a 2.6 GHz Pentium4, overclocked to 2.8GHz.
HyperThreading is enabled, and I have dual channel 433 MHz memory.
 
With this system, HDTV playback is pretty good.  Not perfect, but very
watchable.  The only time I noticed that my machine cannot keep up, is
on *some* camera pans.  In those situation, I do get some *minor*
pause/skip/pause/skip type studdering.
 
I have XvMC disabled.  Enabling it results in very jurky playback of any
OSD, and does not seem to improve the playback of the video.
 
For those stations broadcasting in 1080i, enabling a deinterlacer is a
must.  A deinterlacer, of course, make no difference for the 720p
stations.
 
Experimental A/V sync does not seem to make any difference for me.  I am
using nVidia's 5336 driver, so maybe Experimental A/V sync does not
work.
 
Extra audio buffering is required to keep the sound from studdering.
 
If I enable "use video as timebase", I do not get any audio, and the
video looks like it is running at about 90% of full speed.  This would
indicate to me that my machine cannot keep up with HD streams, and yet
gkrellm never shows my CPU above 65%.  My system "load" and disk
activity also remain low.  This all make me very curious as to why the
HD stream cannot be played at full speed without any frame skipping.
 
I am planning on eventually building a dedicated Myth frontend.  The
reason for this survey is to help me decide what hardware to go with.  I
am somewhat tempted to give an Athlon a try if someone can indicate how
well they work with HD material.  Anyone tried an Athlon64?
 
Thanks,
 
John
 
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