[mythtv-users] Re: MythShyte One unhappy customer (John

[Charles Choukalos]

Hi,

Actually I'll throw in some useful facts.  I did have
a dual PIII-550 system with 2gigs of ram running
mythtv with a software encoder card.  I found from a
system perspective that I could get good live tv off
the following specs:

MPEG4 encoding
bitrate      4000 (scaled)
Capture at:  320x240  (?don't remember these settings)
mpg audio encoding, quality 7
(no features turned on)

If my system wasn't loaded then I could do live
TV/pause/etc.  The OSD was a little slow to pop up. 
Screen wise, I would see Mpeg4 artifacts.  Now, please
bear in mind that this system was also my server
(file, web, mysql, and development box).  By Nicing
-19 my mythbackend and making sure i didn't load up
too many processes things were okay.  However, if I
tried to do a compile or rip more then 1 DVD at a time
(all at nice +19) then the system would stutter all
over the place.  I also noticed that I could run
RTJPEG with out much cpu loading on this machine...
but ran into soo many IO  bound issues that it
effectively strangled the machine.... so I'd do the
Mpeg4, just turn down the capture size significantly
and you should be okay.

I'm now running an MCE150 card in another machine
doing video capture.  The quality is worlds better
then the software encoding card in an XP2400
box...file sizes are much larger, but over all its a
better experience. 

-Chuck

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