[mythtv-users] migrating to HDTV

[stuart]

Dr NoName wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I currently have MythTV box with the following hardware:
> 
> Athlon XP 2400+ (2GHz)
> NVidia GeForce FX 5700
> Hauppage WinTV PVR 250
> 
> It has all been working great with standard NTSC video. Since it's going 
> to disappear in february, I want to understand my options for migrating 
> to HDTV. Thanks in advance for answering my questions.
> 
> 1. AFAIK the external HDTV tuner that you can get for a standard TV 
> takes over channel switching, which means that I can't really use the 
> PVR card in the myth box any more: it would essentially be locked to 
> whatever channel the external tuner is set to. Correct?
> 
> 2. I am looking into getting pcHDTV card, since I hear it's the most 
> Linux-compatible, but I am concerned about performance. Until now this 
> was a non-issue since PVR card does on-board MPEG2 encoding. Does pcHDTV 
> do that or is the stream encoded in software?
> 
> 3. Playback performance is another issue. Will 1920x1080 work on my 
> current box? I hear NVdia cards have playback acceleration but it's not 
> well supported. What's the deal with that? I currently output S-Video to 
> my TV, so I guess it would have to scale it down in real time.
> 
> 4. What about cable? Is pcHDTV antenna-only or can I also record from 
> cable? (unencrypted channels perhaps?)
> 
> 5. Can I use the current antenna for HD or do I need to buy a new one?
> 
> 
> thanks,
> 
> Eugene

Hi Eugene...

I have a single core MBE and a duel core SBE both w/ATSC tuners.  I have 
never been able to use the MBE to playback OTA ATSC HD (1080 or 720) w/o 
some sort of jitter problems.  Further at times (i.e. when commercial 
flagging) the MBE has problems serving up *any* type of recording (i.e. 
OTA ATSC HD, SD or NTSC).  I think my MBE is faster then yours:

> (
> Important stuff:
> model name      : Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 3.06GHz
> cpu MHz         : 3073.674
> cache size      : 256 KB
> MemTotal:       906292 kB
> Model:           GeForce 6200
> Card Type:       AGP
> This box is using 1 Logical Volume made up of 6 partitions on 3 Hard 
> Drives (2 IDE and 1 SATA).
> )

...true, there is some tuning I can do to improve things.  I can 
increase the HDD latency (sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't 
(i.e. when the MBE is busy w/something else)).  I can turn on hardware 
decoding on the video card (but this makes editing almost impossible & 
turns all the overlays to B&W).  But in the end, I was never able to get 
rid of all jitter.

I haven't tried to move my sql data base onto it's own hard drive (I 
swallowed the Logical Volume paradigm pill and regretfully have 
everything on the MBE in 1 LV - bad move - don't do it!).

OTOH, the SBE with a duel core is able to play back anything that is 
locally stored (i.e. stuff it recorded).

I don't think Mythtv gives you any information as to where stuff is 
stored while playing back videos.  This makes it a bit hard to verify 
where to check when one sees problems.

After all the time I have spent on this ...  (and judging from no follow 
ups for suggestions (search back here a week for my post on tuning up my 
MBE)), I would say: "Upgrade your system or replace it with a duel core 
board.".  You can probably do it (mother board and processor) for less 
then $200.  I think looking at the sale ads last week I was speculating 
I could do it for about $150.