[mythtv-users] MythShyte: One unhappy customer

[Howard Cokl]

--- antec <antec30 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I but in the geforce card becuase mt other card
> didnt have the required 
> acceleration. The documentation on the mythtv
> website went into detail about 
> this as a possible cause for prebuffer pause.
> 
> I didnt see it as a softwre problem as everything
> was prebuilt. I just had 
> faith that the software worked. I assumed that the
> computer I built out of 
> junk was just too slow (a dual p2,450).
> 
> Using a pixelview bt878 rip-off aka "bravo", 640 x
> 480 @ 25fps.
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Jake" <jakeisawake at gmail.com>
> To: "Discussion about mythtv"
> <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 5:33 AM
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] MythShyte: One unhappy
> customer
> 
> 
> wow, not sure whether this e-mail is flame-bait or
> what.  the question
> i have for you is why you would try to fix what you
> perceive to be a
> software problem with hardware.  you also left a few
> crucial details
> out of you e-mail, mainly what capture card are you
> using, what
> resolution are you capturing at and what bit rate.
> 
> personally, i have a combined frontend backend with
> a few pvr-250's in
> it that is a measley Athlon 800 with a tnt2 ultra
> for the vid card and
> it happily decodes mpeg2.
> 
> not sure why you "* bought and installed a geforce
> card
> * got xwindows working with nvidia
> * upgraded machine to a P3-1Ghz. (not a celeron!)"
> needed to do all that.
> 
> anyway, hope that is of some assistance though i'm
> sure plenty of
> people are staying away from this thread just
> because of the title ;).

What is the CPU usage on the machine when you are
trying to watch live TV?
Are you using RTjpeg or MPEG4?  RTjpeg is better for
low end systems.

>From the Documentation:
Here are a few data points:

    * A PIII/733MHz system can encode one video stream
using the MPEG-4 codec using 480x480 capture
resolution. This does not allow for live TV watching,
but does allow for encoding video and then watching it
later.
    * A developer states that his AMD1800+ system can
almost encode two MPEG-4 video streams and watch one
program simultaneously.
    * A PIII/800MHz system with 512MB RAM can encode
one video stream using the RTjpeg codec with 480x480
capture resolution and play it back simultaneously,
thereby allowing live TV watching.
    * A dual Celeron/450MHz is able to view a 480x480
MPEG-4/3300kbps file created on a different system
with 30% CPU usage.
    * A P4 2.4GHz machine can encode two 3300Kbps
480x480 MPEG-4 files and simultaneously serve content
to a remote frontend.