[ale] Best processor for MythTV?

[Charles Shapiro]

Heh. Well, I missed the $80 300 gb drives at Fry's. But I got a 400 gb one
for $130 or so.

After actually doing my research I found that chip sizing for MythTV is kind
of a Can o' Worms ( http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1 ),
and depends heavily on what PVR card you choose. So thanks for the advice,
and now I understand that the question is perhaps deeper than I thought.
Anyways, at Fry's I picked up a 2.4 ghz P4 for this machine. From what I can
see, this should be more than adequate for use with a Hauppauge card using
hardware mpeg2 encoding. I'm still on the fence about the PVR card -- the
350 with its hardware mpeg2 decoding is tempting, but I'm warned that's
deprecated. Heck, it might be best with that kind o' muscle to just do the
decoding in software, which makes me lean toward the 250 or 150.  Of course,
I'm really motivated to try to fix up the FM radio stuff, because I'd
actually use that..

-- CHS


On 5/19/06, H P Ladds <householdwords at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Oops! clearly I would have used different wording in my previous e-mail
> regarding HD and Myth had I read Jesse e-mail about selling HD Frontends. I
> started writing my post, then got called away, only to return and finish the
> post about two hours after I had begun. Jesse's post hit the board in the
> interim. Clearly I intended to help Charles, not rail against Jesse's
> product.
>
> Any Frontend (HD or SD) that worked straight out of the box would be worth
> its weight in gold!
>
> I have been trying HD OTA for quite some time, and am making progress,
> but....
>
> I get tons of "prebuffering pause" messages and also "Your system is not
> capable of displaying the full framerate at 1024x768 resolution. Frames will
> be skipped in order to keep the audio and video in sync."
>
> Also despite configuring the machine to use XvMC (in the API), I don't
> think the machine actually loads XvMC.  I read that that I must edit the
> actual config file in order to get XvMC to work.
>
> Also I have an AMD64 Athlon 3200+ and a gig of ram, but still can't play
> analog programing without jitters -- using a PVR-150.
>
> Clearly I have a lot to work on before my machine will past the wife test.
>
>
> Adding to my noobie frustration are the Red Herrings in the MythTV world.
> For example -- when in Mythtv-setup -- one should NOT select the pcHDTV
> HD3000 card setting even if they plan to use a pcHDTV HD3000. I can't help
> but wonder what card actually uses the pcHDTV HD3000 setting then?
>
> Come to think of it a preconfigured Frontend might be worth twice its
> weight in gold.
>
> I am learning a lot of Linux though, and aside from accidentally insulting
> those that could help me, I've enjoyed the project.
>
>
>
>
> On 5/19/06, Jesse Guardiani <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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >
>
>
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