[mythtv-users] Intro & question

[Ivan Kowalenko]

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On Jul 27, 2006, at 11.30, Aaron Howard wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I just joined the users list

Welcome to the community!

> and thought I'd introduce myself and ask a question or three.
>
> A bit about my current setup:
> Athlon XP 1500+
> 768MB RAM
> 80GB IDE HDD (2 x 40GB actually with one dedicated to MythTV)

If you're going with HD, you're going to want to upgrade that. I had  
a 20 GB disk for my recording storage for a while, and I could barely  
fit 20 hours on there. That was SD using tweaked capture settings  
(352x240 MPEG-2 at about 2,200 MbPS). I was constantly having to  
watch shows before they expired. Those recording settings gave me  
about 1.1 GB/hr, at passable quality (certainly not home theater  
quality, but good enough for our old TV set). HD will chew up closer  
to 7 or 8 GB/hr. You might want to invest in a pair of large hard  
disks and combine them into a single partition (RAID and the such).

> KWorld TV878RF-PRO tuner card
> NVidia GeForce 3 video card
> Ubuntu 6.06
> MythTV 0.19
>
> I have Time Warner Digital Cable (a Pioneer BD-V1100 box) and  
> hadn't planned on doing anything higher than 480p stuff

Actually, if you have *just* a Digital Cable box, not an HD digital  
cable box, and it doesn't have HDMI-out or FireWire-out (if it's not  
an HD box, it probably won't), you're not going to get 480p out of it.

> with my setup but I just bit the bullet on a 1280x720 (720p) native  
> projector.  I'm putting a home theater in my basement I want to  
> setup my system as a HTPC (it's a mid-tower case so it'll be in a  
> separate area off to the side from my actual HT room).

Make sure you shield your cable! It may sound paranoid, but over  
whatever distance you're going, it's possible that you'll get signal  
degredation.

> So, a few questions:
> 1. My projector is an InFocus with the proprietary M1 connection.

I'm surprised they manage to stay in business with a proprietary  
connection, and no way to convert it to a standardized connection  
(HDMI, Component, etc.)

> I can get a 25' DVI-to-M1 cable to go straight from my GeForce card  
> into the projector and hopefully drive it natively at 1280x720.   
> Question is: is this a good way to do it? I know standard SD  
> channels aren't at that resolution but figure the combination of  
> MythTV and the video card driver will handle the upscale better  
> than just sending the projector the SD signal and letting it  
> upscale the image.

Actually, that isn't *always* true, from what I've heard. Probably  
worth investigating, though.

> I also figure for MythDVD and such, it'll also upscale and all that  
> jazz (again, not sure if it's MythTV or the video card driver  
> that'll handle that upscaling thing).
>
> 2. I obviously do not have any capability of receiving HD signal  
> right now.  So I need to get an HD card or call up my TW Cable and  
> upgrade or both.  As for the HD card, I know the pcHDTV cards are  
> considered wonderful but does anybody have any experience with the  
> KWorld ATSC 110 card? Actually, I see I can get the KWorld ATSC 110 
> +MCE-200 combo for less than a pcHDTV 5500 card.  Does anybody know  
> if the MCE-200 card will work w/ MythTV and if I can pipe HD video  
> from the ATSC 110 card to it to use its onboard MPEG-2 encoder?

Time for a quick lesson in HD: High Def video is actually *already*  
an MPEG-2 stream. All an HD capture card does is tune it, and pipe  
the stream directly to disk. You won't need the MCE-200 to capture HD  
video. More than likely, the MCE-200 will *only* work with Standard  
def video. Having trouble finding much useful information on the  
MCE-200 in Linux, period, let alone anything useful pertaining to  
Myth. If you want an SD capture card, capable of Hardware MPEG-2, go  
with the Hauppauge PVR-150, -350, or -500. The 150 is just a hardware  
encoder, some with remotes. The 350 has video out, and probably won't  
be of much use to you, given your set-up. The 500 is a dual-tuning  
encoder. That is, it's like a pair of 150's in one card.

Quick Lesson in Cable and HD: Just because you have an HD capture  
card, doesn't mean you're going to get HD over your cable line.  
Theoretically, cable companies are supposed to give you the free Over- 
The-Air (OTA) channels over your cable line in HD, no cost, but just  
because you're subscribed to their cable feed doesn't mean they're  
going to throw much else down that pipe, unless you're paying for it.  
Also, some cable HD feeds are encrypted, and make HD capture cards  
worthless. The solution to this is the use of an HD cable box's  
federally mandated FireWire port. Hopefully, you can pull most of  
your content across that, but some of it might be encrypted  
(legally), and is, as yet, impossible to capture.

You cable company might make you rent/purchase one of their HD boxes  
before they send you HD anyway, and at least FireWire cards are  
(relative to HD capture cards) cheap. Might be worth looking at,  
unless you can find a user who uses the same cable company as you,  
who can let you know of his/her experiences.

> It appears the only option for HD cards w/ built in MPEG encoder  
> chips are in the > $2,000 range.

Well, again, it's because that HD is *already* MPEG-2. It's possible  
you're coming across HD cards with an SD mode that does hardware MPEG.

>
> 3. Should I upgrade to a newer video card?  The GeForce 3 has the  
> necessary bits to support XvMC as I understand it...does upgrading  
> it really get me much?  Maybe an HDMI port?  Would it be better to  
> get that and then buy the HDMI-to-M1 cable for the InFocus projectors?

Well, probably a DVI port, not an HDMI port, so it would be the same  
cable. People around here seem to like the GeForce FX 5200. It's  
powerful enough to squeeze out 1080p (with a good enough CPU), so  
it's highly probable that the 5200 should handle your requested 720p.  
Don't know much else.

Not too bad for a guy who's never touched HD hardware beyond plugging  
his XBox into his friend's HD TV.

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