[mythtv-users] High end, state of the art Myth Frontend

[Andre Newman]

On 18 Sep 2013, at 16:40, Joseph Fry <joe at thefrys.com> wrote:
> 
> While an updated NVidia card might get you slightly better output in
> VDPAU, I kinda doubt it…

Well, I've upgraded from a 9400GT, to a GT220, a GT430 (ugh) to a GT640 and each step of the way picture quality has improved in various ways. Yes I've gone back and tried to old cards (this week actually) and yes the newer ones are better, my girlfriend has commented "what's wrong with the picture" when I went back to the GT220 last week trying out another old LGA775 board that doesn't seem to like the GT640, doesn't like the 220 much either!


> you may want to invest in more processor
> and see if you like what can be done in software alone better.

I've done some tests with my i7-860 and so far it's almost but not quite as good as vdpau on the gt640.

>  There
> are a lot of switches that can be added to do additional post
> processing in software, and Yadif 2x or Greedy High Motion 2x
> deinterlacers, may out perform VDPAU Advanced 2x on some content.

I haven't tried Yadif 2x yet, Greedy high motion 2x didn't look so good.


>  If
> your display has a high end video processor in it, or can display
> interlaced content well, you might simply output the native signal and
> let the display work its magic; this is what I would do with a CRT
> projector, not sure about DLP though I suspect a high end projector
> may do better than any software or VDPAU solution.

I had trouble outputting 1080i from an nvidia card originally and haven't revisited that. It was inverting line order in some random annoying way.

> 
> Finally, as you get into high framerates, you might find yourself
> limited by your Nvidia hardware and VDPAU…

That's the case with test clips I have already, this is why I'm considering something more powerful.

> 
> doing 2D graphics, so as long as it will do the resolutions and frame
> rates your interested in, it should work fine.  And you don't need to
> use OpenGL…

I though the other renderers were obsolete now? I guess I misunderstood, I thought we had vdpau, opengl and vaapi and that vaapi didn't do de-interlacing yet...

> 
> As for CPU... I have found that more cores isn't always better, at
> least for a front end.

Yes, I agree, I tried a Q6600 that wasn't really any better than the E4300 at software decode.

>  I still have one of the late model Pentium 4
> 3.2 (or 3.4) GHz cpus doing software decoding and presentation...
> works fine for just about everything.  I don't think you will go wrong
> with an i3 or even a Sandy/Ivy Celeron for standard materials... I
> have a G540 Celeron in my backend and before I started using VAAPI, I
> didn't have a problem playing anything, even while the system was
> recording and doing commercial flagging.  High framerate stuff might
> need a bit more CPU, so I would either get an i3 or wait for the
> Haswell Celerons.

An i3 is looking promising right now.

Thanks