[mythtv-users] Are either of these tuners viable for use?

[Gary Dawes]

On Tue, 2005-01-11 at 10:47 +0100, Maarten wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 January 2005 06:24, Adam Felson wrote:
> > On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 22:26 +0100, Maarten wrote:
> > > On Monday 10 January 2005 21:27, Tim Smoot wrote:
> > > > Hey all,
> 
> > > I use bt878 cards, they'll work fine...   ...IF your CPU has the power.
> > > As it is, I _seriously_ doubt that an Eden 533 can handle it, not even
> > > when just using rtjpeg...  So no luck there.
> >
> > I never did get two bt878 cards to work without hiccups.  I upped the
> > CPU to an athlon 3000 (333mhz fsb) in the hope of running three dumb
> > cards, but couldn't even handle two.  
> 
> Hm.  That's a shame.  Here I have a perfectly working two-card bttv setup.
> System specs:
> Athlon XP 2600, FSB overclocked from 200 to 233, 256 MB Ram.
> Mythtv specs:
> Recording directlyin mpeg4, rez 480x480 at 2600 Kbps. No recording filters, only 
> deint on playback. 
> This system has been recording two channels simultaneously since a couple of 
> months. I _very_ rarely see or hear hiccups, and if I do it's often my 
> frontend that can't really cope.  
> But it needed a lot of tweaking and testing initially.
> 
> No, an Athlon 3000 should have coped fine.  Maybe you went overboard and 
> recorded at full PAL resolution, or something ?  Or your signal strength is /
> was below par (I had to buy an antenna amplifier myself).
> 
> > Pentium4's with their amazing FSB speed might do better.
> 
> Don't believe the hype. Pay more for less ?
> 
> Maarten

I've also got a fully functional system with 2 bt878 cards. The box is
an athlon 2000 with 512MB, and is a combined frontend and backend.

I can record 2 programs at 576x288 3000 bitrate with ease, and can just
about watch a third recording at the same time, although if one of the
recordings has high motion everything starts to stutter slightly.

If anybody thinks my recoding res is strange, 288 was the best
compromise between quality and processing. Virtually no motion blur at
all except on fast ticker tape text along the bottom, sports and
everything are great.

gary