[mythtv-users] Hardware ideas

David Wood obsidian at panix.com
Thu Jun 24 18:12:17 EDT 2004


On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Jarod Wilson wrote:

> I just split mine off to a dedicated box, partially in a noise-reduction
> effort, but mainly because I wanted to muck with my Athlon XP 3200 and my
> pcHDTV card, but the 3200 was the master backend. I'm rolling with an old
> dual PIII-733 Dell box w/a 40GB system HD (which also houses the system image
> for netbooting my EPIA frontend and the live TV buffer directory), a 250GB
> drive for all my recordings, and two tuners. The EPIA also stores its
> recordings there (captured w/its PVR-350). The 3200 is now running FC2 with a
> pcHDTV-patched 2.6.7 kernel. Tonight I try getting actual video out of the
> pcHDTV card again...

Wow.

> Its damned good. I'm still very happy with what I get out of a GeForce 4 MX,
> but after finally getting my 350 stable for an extended period of time, I'm
> starting to appreciate its quality more. The quality isn't worth it unless
> the machine is stable.

See, there's my problem. If it's not stable it'll drive me crazy. I have
enough finicky stuff around the house as it is.

> > I had also heard than when used for things other than MPEG2 decoding there
> > were problems - that in fact you can't do Divx/xvid/etc at all at the
> > moment due to driver issues (ordinary 2d performance too slow?).
> >
> > Can any 350 owners confirm/deny? This would make or break for me.
>
> Deny (well, sort of). My EPIA M10000 (wimpy VIA C3 at 1GHz, performs more like
> a Pentium III at 600MHz) can play back many xvid and ffmpeg mpeg4 encoded dvd
> rips perfectly smooth. Other types aren't so smooth. But if you're using an
> Athlon XP 2600, you might be fine with all types. Then again, I never had a
> stable system when using a PVR-350 in an Athlon XP 2600 system (VIA KM400
> board, MSI KM4M-L). The ivtv drivers are somewhat picky about which chipsets
> they'll work reliably with. They're great w/EPIAs though!

This is really informative. Thank you. See, I've been archiving my DVDs
into the computer for a while now, and there's a smattering of codecs at
this point. All playable under my current desktop linux, but they'd need
to work on whatever new video card I set up.

I really like the EPIA/separated tiers. I wish I could do it, but that
will have to come later.

> The very latest 2.6 kernels from Red Hat and kernel.org, have a new feature,
> 4kstacks, enabled by default. Neither the nvidia or ivtv drivers are
> 4kstacks-clean. At present, you can recompile a kernel with the old style
> 8kstacks, but that won't be an option in the future. Expect updated drivers
> before too much longer, and the problems should be no more...

Phew. OK, I'm already familiar with the 4/8k stacks issue (and already
using 8k stacks in 2.6 for other reasons).

> > Now I am thinking of maybe going in another direction altogether and just
> > relying on the CPU, using something like an AverTV stereo (bttv)
>
> I have one of these. The tuner is junk, picture quality is mediocre. The
> PVR-x50 cards are far better.

Ack! I was afraid of this.

So it sounds like PVR-250 + s-video out on another vid card.... (I note
that this seems to be the most common configuration according to the PVR
hardware survey.)

> > and mx440.
>
> And I have a number of these. They work quite well.

And it's down to the mx440 and the radeon 9200.

Re: the mx440... do you have issues with screen size and positioning?

> You'll save a few bucks, but spending the extra money for a PVR-x50 is worth
> it, IMO. For reference, I have four hardware encoder cards and two software
> ones. The two software ones now do nothing more than tune FM radio on my
> workstation, three of the hardware encoder cards are in my production Myth
> boxes, one in my dev box. You can always transcode to mpeg4 post-mpeg2
> capture if space is a concern.

Point taken.

> I have the CoolerMaster ATC-620C-BX1 myself. I love it. Far more than any of
> Antec's supposed HTPC cases.

That's a sweet looking case. Too deep for me though at 445mm.



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