[mythtv-users] Testing the HDTV Waters

Calvin Harrigan charriglists at bellsouth.net
Sun May 7 09:22:48 EDT 2006


Calvin Harrigan wrote:

>matt mead wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Calvin Harrigan wrote:
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I've been using Mythtv with SD for years now.  I've decided to try HD, 
>>>there are quite a few OTA HD channels available in the area.  I browsed 
>>>through the list looking for minimum configurations needed to play back 
>>>HD.  The specs seemed a bit high.  My current setup is an Athlon XP 1800 
>>>with a FX5200 video card, 512 Megs ram. 360 gigs storage.  According to 
>>>what I've read, what I have is not powerful enough.  But being stubborn 
>>>I downloaded a couple HD clips.  One in mpeg and one in wmv format,1080i 
>>>and 720p respectively.  Suprisingly enough both clips played 
>>>flawlessly.  I was blown away by what I've been missing with HD.  The 
>>>concern is that I played the clips using the mplayer from within 
>>>mythtv.  Is the mythtv built in player able to play HD as efficiently?  
>>>The native format of the tv it's connected to is 1280 x 720 via 
>>>dvi->hdmi.  So the 1080i was scaled.  Does anyone else have a similar 
>>>low end setup that is using hd successfully?  Is an 1800 just too slow?  
>>>Any comments appreciated.
>>>   
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>First off, are you talking CPU model or CPU Mhz?  I was capable of playing 720p 
>>perfectly on an Ahtlon XP @1733Mhz, 512M ram, and an FX5200, using mythtv.  For 
>>1080i playback, mplayer would do it fine, but I would get the occasional glitch 
>>in mythtv when the CPU was asked to do something else.  CPU usage tended to be 
>>around 85-90% for playing of 1080i using bob deinterlacing.  The important 
>>thing to note is that I was using XvMC.  This was all with mythtv .18.1, and 
>>XvMC worked fine with the 7xxx nvidia driver I was using at the time.  That 
>>said, I'm now running on the .19-fixes branch on much faster hardware (Athlon 
>>64), and having to do software-only decoding with xv scaling.  For the life of 
>>me, regardless of nvidia driver version, I cannot get XvMC going with my nvidia 
>>6200.  With software decoding, I cannot get the CPU usage consistently below 
>>92-95% with bob deinterlacing, though kernel and linear blend result in 50-65% 
>>CPU usage for 1080i.
>>
>>I'd say give it a shot.  I wonder if anyone has a script to "import" a file as 
>>a mythtv recorded program.  If you can find something like this, grab a real 
>>mpeg2 stream and try it out:
>>http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/LotRclip2-mpg.torrent
>>
>>This is a Lord of the Rings clip the EFF hosts a torrent for so you can 
>>determine if your computer can handle it.  WMV really isn't going to tell you 
>>much in terms of whether your computer will properly handle MPEG2 at those 
>>resolutions and bitrates.
>>
>>I personally think if you're talking 1800Mhz, you have a strong chance of 
>>getting HDTV to playback adequately, assuming you can use XvMC.  I wouldn't 
>>expect the frontend to do much else, though, as it will likely cause stuttering 
>>when it does.
>>
>>
>>-matt
>>
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>1800 XP  is the CPU model, I think the actual speed is 1533 or so.  I am 
>not sure if mplayer was using the xvmc capabilities of the card or not.  
>I do not use xvmc in mythtv because it causes some strange behavior with 
>the on screen display.  this is with 0.18.1.  I'm downloading the 
>torrent you linked to above I'll see how that works.
>_______________________________________________
>mythtv-users mailing list
>mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>  
>
I was able to play the LOTR clip in mplayer using XVMC, it used about 
40% CPU.  It seemed to work pretty good.  I'm going to give hdtv a go 
with my current hardware.  Thanks for all the input.

Calvin....


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list