[mythtv-users] Seeking hardware opinions

Steve Dobson steve.dobson at uthink.co.uk
Thu Jun 3 08:33:00 EDT 2004


On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 01:20:39PM +0100, Simon Kenyon wrote:
> > Hardware:
> > VIA Epia MII 6000E mainboard w/ 600MHz Eden ESP fanless 
> > processor Morex 3688 mini-ITX case Hauppauge PVR-250 MCE 2.5" 
> > HD (probably 4-12 GB) slim DVD-RW/CD-RW drive 256MB DDR memory
> > 
> > That's about it.  I will be using NFS for the actual video 
> > storage, as you might have guessed from the HD size.  The VIA 
> > board has TV-out support and hardware MPEG-2 decoded, though 
> > I'll probably just do software decoding because of the 
> > support for more formats.
> 
> I don't think so.
> I have several M-9000 boxes and software decode is not a runner.
> Hardware support is required; albeit this is supplied by the motherboard.
> 
> > 
> > 600 MHz is the fastest fanless CPU offered on that board.  
> > Will that be sufficient since I'll be using hardware 
> > encoding?  I've played DVDs with a 500MHz processor before 
> > and didn't have any problems.  I'm fairly sure that the 
> > onboard video has Xv support so that should help the CPU out a lot.
> 
> Remember this is a C3. what 500Mhz processor ae you talking about?

I have a C3 running with a PVR-350 and I can confirm that the 533Mhz
CPU is not up to the job of doing decode on its own.  You get about 
1 or 2 frames per second - not very watchable (but useful if you want
to take screen shots for presentations).

Run the decode via the PVR-350 MPEG decode hardware and the CPU has
plenty of time for other things.

Steve


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