[mythtv-users] Commercial PVR offerings - is MythTv still competitive ?

jedi jedi at mishnet.org
Tue Feb 10 02:52:41 UTC 2009


On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 06:10:35PM -0800, Yeechang Lee wrote:
> David Brodbeck <gull at gull.us> says:
> > The amount of discussion on this list about how to get proper HD
> > playback suggests otherwise.  It seems this is a really difficult
> > issue for a lot of people.
> 
> People who today have difficuty with MythTV recordings' HD playback
> are:

      I have similar issues with my SD frontend. I think ultimately it
has to do with the traditional distinction between PC video and TV. With
other platforms (ST, Amiga) there wasn't that separation. So a lot of
people have trouble forcing a PC to be like an Amiga of old.

      If all HDTV's could be treated like a generic monitor, a lot of 
these problems would evaporate. MythTV could just drive the panel at
the resolution of the video and that would be that. As it is, MythTV
has to force a PC to adapt to rather limiting TV input standards and
also deal with quirks of individual TVs.

      That said, I haven't had to do a lot of tweaking beyond X
configuration to deal with any of my HDTV panels. However, my
CRT SD TV still remains somewhat of an enigma. I've tried a 
number of times over the years (since giving up the ST) to make
my PCs and TVs get along. However the Apple DVI->svideo dongle
was really only the first decent result after all that trying.

> 
> 1. using inadequate frontend hardware
> 2. using a non-Nvidia video card
> 3. using an Nvidia video card but not the Nvidia proprietary drivers
> 4. trying to play back HD-PVR recordings without a VDPAU-capable video
>    card or a Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz
> 
> 2 is very rare, nowadays. 3 happens sometimes, but is easy to remedy
> unless in an unusual situation like a Mac mini. 4 is also rare because
> anyone savvy enough to run trunk for HD-PVR support presumably knows
> about the heightened playback requirements. That leaves 1.
> 
> > At any rate, I know my 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 can't do it.
> 
> It's--no exaggeration--not possible to buy a new desktop computer[1]
> that doesn't have enough CPU horsepower for HD playback. It hasn't
> been possible for going on two years.

[deletia]



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list