[mythtv-users] [OT] Hardware (video and audio card) questions, differences and features?

[Chad]

On 12/28/05, Johan Venter <johan at vulturest.com> wrote:
> Chad wrote:
> > Hello!
> >
> > I'm looking for an easy-to-use website that will explain the
> > differences of the nvidia cards to me.  MythTV says I need a Geforce 4
> > or better to do XvMC, but I've got an MX440 and it barely (nearly
> > unusably) does it.  I am looking for a faster/better/newer card and
> > want to know the difference in the 5200, 6200, 6600, GT versions of
> > those, the 4000...
>
> I use the SVideo out on an MX440 and had little luck with XvMC in 0.18.2
> (the fixes release), but am having far more luck with the latest SVN -
> it's totally watchable and lowers my CPU usage quite significantly (to
> the point where HD channels used to be unwatchable, but now only
> ocassionaly skip with a 'pre-buffering pause').
>
> > I'm looking for a card that actually works (well) in linux/mythtv with
> > it's Digital Coax output.  I have yet to actually be able to get
> > anything to play through my digital out and have my receiver pick it
> > up as a Dolby Digital sound source (when it's a HD recording with DD
> > audio).
>
> Believe it or not, I'm using the AC97 onboard audio on a KT600 chipset
> mainboard through the SPDIF out.
>
> All I did was enable IEC968 output in alsamixer, turn IEC968 playback
> all the way *down* (it seems to work in reverse?), and pointed Myth to
> use alsa:spdif as the output device.
>
> For mplayer, I use a command line similar to:
>    mplayer -fs -zoom -quiet -vo xv -ao alsa:device=spdif -ac hwac3,
> (NOTE: extra ',' at the end is required, tells mplayer to fallback to
> other codes if it can't access hardware ac3, or the stream is not ac3 at
> all)
>
> > The best I've gotten is a loud repeated 'beat' (which is my best
> > description, I would guess it's an analog version of the digital
> > pulse?) which I quickly mute or kill.  I've tried/used a cmipci, an
> > emu10k1, and onboard via-82xx, all through very new versions of ALSA,
> > with no avail.
>
> That's it, my AC97 chipset uses the via-82xx driver.
>
> Regards,
>
> Johan
> _______________________________________________

Excellent news, I guess I'll continue working with my onboard audio to
see what I can get, sounds promising :)

As for my video, I broke down last night and bought an FX5200,
supposedly this is a great card for doing HDTV decoding through XvMC. 
I found a matrix that isn't completely accurate comparing the
different cards, but it seemed accurate enough for me to pick a decent
card.

Thanks for the reply!

Chad