[mythtv-users] Low end experiment with latest Knoppmyth

[Nick Rout]

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 12:16:18 +1000
ffrr <ffrr at tpg.com.au> wrote:

> I wanted to see whether a very low end machine I had kicking around, 
> would work with a DVB card and using knoppmyth.
> 
> Machine is...
> 
> 533MHz Celeron
> nVidia TNT2 16MB video card (external VGA to composite video converter 
> box) running at 640x480
> 512MB RAM
> slow IDE drives (a 4 GB and a 15 GB - not intending to do much recording 
> :-))
> Twinhan DVB-T 3020C Mini Ter TV card
> Knoppmyth R5A22
> 
> 
> 
> Firstly, ALL hardware works out of the box !   Only thing I 'cheated' on 
> was to import a channels.conf file that I generated on my other machine, 
> rather than scanning for channels during setup.
> 
> 
> Performance... well it was ALMOST fast enough.  So close.  Just a slight 
> periodic pause while watching live TV.  Turning off deinterlacing made 
> it ALMOST perfect.   Recording seemed to work fine, with no pauses in 
> the video like live TV.  Maybe the 15GB disk I was recording to was 
> faster than the 4GB disk that the live ringbuffer was on.  Should have 
> tried pushing the ringbuffer onto the other disk maybe.
> 
> Picture on the screen was just a bit under par.  A bit blurry around the 
> edges.  Not surprising using composite out on an external video 
> converter box.  I am sure a nice newer cheap video card with svideo out 
> would give a great picture.
> 
> 
> This experiment has been very helpful in my understanding just what type 
> of hardware I need for a standalone myth box.  Just thought I'd relate 
> my experiences here in case it was of interest to anyone else, 
> especially after all the great help I have received of late.  Note:  no 
> glitches were apparent during the short test.  I am convinced now at 
> least that this cheap DVB card is a great choice for use with MythTV.  
> When I get a better box, I might put a couple of them in it.

As I understand it DVB is transmitted in mpeg2 format already, so there is no need to do an encoding. I doubt your setup would have acceptable performance with a framegabber.

Nice to see these benchmarks posted occasionally!


> 
> 
> 
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