[mythtv-users] Problems playing file from HD PVR

[Mark Goldberg]

Sarah wrote:

>As I said in another thread, I'm still trying to find a sweet spot of
>what is a realistic minimum for h264 based HD, all I've got so far is:
>
>VIA c3-1Ghz - NO! LOL (yeah, but I just had to try it).
>Transmetta thingie @ 1Ghz - NO! (see above)
>AMD Athlon64 3400 (64bit) - NO!
>Pentium 4-M 2.0Ghz (last generation before Core) - NO! (surprised by
>this, really thought it could do it).
>Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz (2Mb Cache) - Yes. 20% - 50% CPU.
>Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz (4Mb Cache) - Yes.

Is this for the file in question? I can play the apple movie trailers
just fine, but not this file.

On a Athlon X2 4200 it crashes all players except ffplay. On ffplay it
almost plays, only using one core
at 100%. It drops frames and the music stutters, but it will play some
portions for a second or so. Using
-threads 2 on the command line does not change anything. I can't find
much info, but I'm thinking that
the h.264 decoder will not use two cores effectively. This computer,
Fedora 8 64 bit, Athlon 64 X2 4200,
Nvidia 6150, DVI to a plasma at 1080p xv bob2x plays MPEG 2 1080i just
fine. If it indeed will only use
one core, the fastest clock speed dual core would be as good as a just
slightly slower quad core. Tom's
Hardware did a test of single core performance in multicore
processors, and it looks like an Athlon 9550
may be about the same as a dual core 5400, but I have not tested either.

Mark