[ale] Best processor for MythTV?

[Calvin Harrigan]

Charles Shapiro wrote:
> Well yeah.  I'm mostly interested in this as a technological toy. If it 
> was up to me, we wouldn't even have a TV in the house.  Plus we don't 
> have cable.  If my wife doesn't take to it, I might-could sell it or 
> convert it into some other interesting thing.
> 
> But thanks for the insights into processor speed vs video card. Looks 
> like I'm gonna get stuck with a fairly hefty CPU to make this run right. 
> The shuttle only has one PCI slot, so I have to run the Radeon on the 
> MB. Alas, although the Radeon 9100 can do  hardware mpeg2 decoding, ATI 
> won't release the details to the driver writers. Dang man.
> 
> BTW what is "bob deint"? I thought it was a typo, but google has lots o' 
> references without ever giving a definition.
> 
> -- CHS (Video newbie, ok linux d00d)
> 
> 
> On 5/19/06, *Jesse Guardiani* <jesse at guardiani.us 
> <mailto:jesse at guardiani.us>> wrote:
> 
>     H P Ladds wrote:
>      > These thoughts FYI from a person up to his elbows in building his
>     first
>      > Myth Machine. My Linux skills are intermediate at best --  other
>     ALErs
>      > please feel free to correct me. (No tact necessary).
>      >
>      > 1. Most wives would take to Tivo more quickly than MythTV.
> 
>     I can't comment as my wife has never used a Tivo. However, if you want
>     a Tivo, buy one. MythTV is *not* a cheaper Tivo. It's actually quite a
>     bit more expensive. I think most people use MythTV because it's open,
>     powerful, fun, and has no monthly fee.
> 
> 
>      > 2. HD is on the cusp of being truly "doable." It's not "there"
>     yet. I
>      > have yet to read of 100% satisfaction with HD and MythTV. (More
>     success
>      > with mplayer and xine.) For the present, HDTV w/MythTV is an academic
>      > excercise -- no real reason to try-it otherwise.
> 
>     Have you tried HDTV? If not, then you might want to reserve judgement.
>     I currently run HDTV on my combined frontend/backend machine and it
>     works
>     pretty well. I have a few minor complaints, but it's quite usable. Many
>     people with deeper pockets than I are very happy with HDTV on AMD 3200+
>     systems without using XvMC at all.
> 
>     My frontends will make 100% satisfying HDTV playback without using a
>     huge CPU a reality. That's the goal. I probably won't start selling the
>     systems until I can make that happen, and I'm very close right now.
> 
> 
>      > I have yet to learn of any benefit to using version .19 over .18.
>     Some
>      > say XvMC is broken in .19; this is not an accepted fact.
> 
>     XvMC is not broken in 0.19. Not even close. It's actually MUCH improved.
>     0.19 has many benefits over 0.18. I suggest you take a look at the
>     release
>     notes:
>        http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Notes_-_0.19
> 
> 
> 
>     --
>     Jesse Guardiani
>     Programmer/Sys Admin
>     jesse at guardiani.us <mailto:jesse at guardiani.us>
> 
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> 
> 
> 
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Bob Deinterlace is basically taking a regular interlaced NTSC signal and 
creating a progressive display (most lcds, plasmas, monitors, etc are 
prgoressive scan).  It deinterlaces by creating a full frame from every 
interlaced frame then doubling the frame rate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinterlacing

It's under line doubling in the article.  Notice the mention of motion 
compensation, that's where the xvMC comes in.  Bob and xvmc creates a 
really decent deinterlaced picture.

As for the rest of the post:

My girlfriend has no issues using mythtv, it's rather intuitive.  She 
prefers way more than the dishnetwork pvr interface.  I realize that's 
not Tivo, but it at least shows that myth can compete with and beat 
commercial offerings.

I still use 18.1, it's been good to me.  I'll eventually upgrade to .19 
to get some of the newer functionalities.  I'm waiting for 0.19.1 though.

I can do HD 720p and 1080i on an AMD XP2200 on a combination BE/FE. 
This is using an nvidia 5200 with xvmc enabled.

Calvin...