[mythtv-users] My HDTV woes

[Jesse Guardiani]

On Sunday 02 April 2006 5:56 pm, Mark Lehrer wrote:
> So, here's some info on my setup:
> 
> > Pentium 4 3.00GHz w/ hyperthreading (64bit chip, but 32bit install)
> > 1GB RAM
> 
> This chip is nowhere near powerful enough to do HDTV.  Intel, in
> general, is pretty worthless.  I recommend getting an Athlon x2 3800 -
> that is the first chip I had that could do HDTV properly (my
> definition of properly is playing back 1080i content with 2x
> deinterlacing & at 1280x720).
> 
> I tried a 3.2 GHz P4 and an Athlon 3500+ before, and neither was good
> enough.


:) I've got you all beat. I run an AGP nvidia 5200 via DVI -> Westinghouse
LCD 1360x768 and playback 1080i with XvMC and my uber crappy $50 Celeron D 
2.93ghz. I'm running 0.19-fixes revision 9591 from the 1st, and I'm using 
RTC for the timing since OpenGL Vsync is broken in nvidia 8178. If `top`
is to be trusted (for some reason it lies sometimes on my IC7-G mobo) then
I have 60% idle CPU during 1080i playback.

I have just two complaints:

1.) I can't turn on Bob deint without a ton of problems. But my wife and 
family are blind to the interlacing artifacts anyway. And if I'm the only 
one annoyed then things are going pretty well. My gut tells me that this
is more a problem with MythTV's code than a problem with nvidia or the
CPU. XvMC + Bob works perfectly in Xine, for example.

2.) The rate of MythTV successfully tuning any given HDTV channel through
my AverTV HD A180 DVB card in LiveTV is relatively poor. I had to move 
this card to the second card in my mythtv-setup so my family could watch
LiveTV reliably on my PVR 350. This had the side effect of improving the 
HDTV LiveTV success rate a bit, oddly enough. For some reason Myth has 
an easier time tuning the card from the 'Y' button rather than entering 
LiveTV directly, but it still fails now and then. I'm pretty sure this 
is just a problem with MythTV and ATSC cards in general, and I suspect 
you'll have this problem no matter how huge your CPU until the code gets
fixed.

I haven't noticed skipping or stutter yet and I've been testing it all
weekend. Playback seems fairly reliable once it starts.

Now if I can only get Bob operational I'll be insanely content.

-- 
Jesse Guardiani
Programmer/Sys Admin
jesse at wingnet.net