[mythtv-users] A noob question regarding hardware req. andhardwarecodecs

[Per Åge Sørvik]

Ray Olszewski wrote:
> At 01:31 PM 8/5/2003 -0400, John Wells wrote:
> [...]
> 
>> Based on your above comments, and based on what I have now, if I buy a
>> Hauppauge PVR-250 or 350 and use the current ATI TV wonder as my second
>> tuner, am I correct in assuming that having only one PVR-250/350 will
>> force me to still have at least a 1 GHZ processor for recording and
>> watching live tv at the same time?
> 
> 
> 
> At least 1 GHz; maybe more. As Joseph said, his rule of thmb is 1 GHz 
> for encoding, 500 MHZ for decoding. (My experience is about the same as 
> his here, BTW.) Since watching "live" TV with Myth involves a buffer, 
> you are both encoding and decoding. So the arithmetic says you need 1.5 
> GHz for "live" TV with software encoding. Plus a bit for simultaneous 
> operation of the PVR-250 ... its CPU load should be light, but that's 
> not the same as zero.
> 
> Joseph's rule of thumb is a bit cautious; you can get by with less than 
> it specifies, by making some quality tradeoffs. Reduce capture 
> resolution to 320x240 (for NTSC; PAL is just a tad higher) and you'll 
> probably get by with 1 GHz ... though only you can decide if this 
> quality meets your standards.
> 
> 
> 

Just another experience here:

512x480, 3200kbps mpg4 watching live tv lets my 1600xp run with 35-40% 
idle. I can't believe the poor performance you are getting out of your 
systems. Maybe it's the vidcard XV support that's partially done in 
software ?

--

perage