[mythtv-users] NVIDIA XcVM support . . . . does the card model matter much?

[stefan_jones at comcast.net]

Currently, I'm running myth .21 on a combined frontend/backend. The host is a nice quiet HP mini tower with a P4 1.8 Ghz cpu and 768mb of memory. (Found it in a dumpster . . . go figure)  It does just great as a SD capture box, but now that I have an HDTV I'm starting to set my sights higher.

I have a PCHDTV-3000 card installed, and (just recently) finally got it working. I haven't worked out all the channel mappings yet, but I manually scheduled the capture of half an episode of Malcolm in the Middle and it completed OK. Played with my standard playback mode, the video barely plays.

So, I'm looking into either

A) enable XcVM on my GeForce FX 5200 card, and hope there's just enough cycles to play HD @ 768 mode, or 

B) turn my current system into a backend, and put together a powerful but slim front end.

In the latter case . . . does it much matter which NVIDIA based card I get, if all I'd be using it for is HD playback? Some of the lower end cards don't have a fan, for example, which should reduce noise and power usage.

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http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones