[mythtv-users] MythTV w/ 2 pchdtv 5500s and 1 wintv 401 on ubuntu dapper

[Andrew Casper]

On Aug 29, 2006, at 7:14 PM, Carl Youngblood wrote:

> On 8/29/06, Andrew Casper <andrew at andrewcasper.com> wrote:
>> You might have better luck, but from experience I can tell you that I
>> could never get the component "HDTV" output of a NVidia 6600 GT card
>> to work with any media players reliably. The drivers don't seem to
>> support the necessary features. Try connecting a VGA or DVI monitor
>> and seeing if you have better luck. I ended up buying a VGA-to-
>> Component box to interface with my TV.
>>
>> MythTV uses mplayer by default for playing back videos. Mplayer
>> really needs XvMC to do HD on an NVidia card. You'll have to
>> recompile mplayer with your kernel-devs installed and the xvmc option
>> enabled.
>>
>> My issues were identical to yours and those two combined solved my
>> issues.
>
> Wow, thanks for the info.  I feel stupid having gone to the effort of
> finding an nvidia card with no fan and component outputs.  I'm
> disappointed that they don't work better, because those converters are
> expensive and I have a hard time believing they will do as well as
> something that is outputting 1920x1080 pixels natively.  One of the
> converters I looked at says that the best output resolution to use is
> 1024x768, which would mean there would be some fudging at 1080i.
> Overall there are not a lot of technical details on the product pages.
>
> Speaking of which, I have found the following converters:
>
> http://www.svideo.com/pctocomponent.html ($79)
> http://www.digitalconnection.com/products/video/9a60.asp ($112)
> http://www.digitalconnection.com/Products/Video/kdvtca3.asp ($169)
> http://www.vpi.us/vga-hdtv.html ($70)
> http://www.cablewholesale.com/specs/40h1-50200.htm ($133)
>
> Can anyone comment on their experiences with these converters and give
> recommendations?
>
> I have both VGA and DVI outputs on my video card, so if anyone knows
> of a better option that is available to me because I have DVI, I'd
> love to hear it.  I found some cheaper DVI to component cables, but I
> wasn't sure if they'd work:
>
> http://sewelldirect.com/DVI/Cables/DVItoComponentRCA
>
> Many of them said something about being designed to work with ATI
> cards.  I thought all DVI outputs were the same.
>
> Thanks,
> Carl
> _______________________________________________

Carl -

I know exactly how you feel because I felt exactly like that two  
months ago. But I bought the Audio Authority 9A60 and have been happy  
ever since. It supports 1080i, 720, and 480 and will use your VGA port.

http://www.audioauthority.com/index.php?ret=http:// 
www.audioauthority.com/9a60.php

While it might be maddening, I figured that I would probably be  
upgrading my TV in the next 12 months to something with a DVI  
connector. The 9a60 is just buying me that year.

- Andrew