[mythtv-users] Hardware for HD Playback

[R. G. Newbury]

Mike LaPlante wrote:
> Chris Tepe wrote:
>> With the change from Zap2it to SD probably requiring an upgrade I'm 
>> thinking of upgrading my hardware as well to support HD recording and 
>> play back.  I'm looking for some recommendations  as to MB, CPU, Memory 
>> and Video Card.  I will eventually have 1 master backend/frontend and 2+ 
>> frontends.  I've looked at the hardware databases on the web but none 
>> really address the HD issue clearly.  My current systems are a couple of 
>> atholon 2300+ w/ nVidia gforce cards  and a HD Home run .  my playback 
>> was very choppy. 
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>>   
> My backend is an athlon 2800 with an FX5200, its pretty old school. It 
> plays HD okay with XvMC on, playback can sometimes get choppy if 
> mythcommflag or something is running.
> 
> My remote frontend, which is where I do 95% of my viewing is also a 
> pretty old P4 2.4ghz with 2gigs of DDR and a GeForce 6600. I have zero 
> problems at all with it playing HD, but its just a frontend, so its not 
> doing any of the DB or recording stuff the backend does.
> 
> My point is this, you can have some pretty old hardware playing HD. It 
> helps a good bit if the backend and frontend are separated. Going 
> gigabyte might help too, though my runs fine on 10/100.
> 
> I think any new system you buy today should be fine playing HD stuff as 
> long as you get a good bit of RAM and a decent Nvidia card.

And maybe this is a good time to consider just building a new frontend 
box and moving the present backend box to some other physical location. 
I am extremely happy with my Via SP13000 based BE/FE system, but if it 
does not do the job for HD, and that looks jerky at present, then it's 
37 watt draw will go the furnace room on an UPS, in an old case, and the 
Silverstone LC11M will get a new motherboard and (likely) Intel Core Duo 
CPU and it will net-boot..no hard drive.


Geoff



              R. Geoffrey Newbury			


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