[mythtv-users] Re: Advice

[Jarod C. Wilson]

On Tuesday, Albert Santoni wrote:

>> 1.  The cheapest tv-out solution I could find would be the chaintech 
>> gf2
>> 440mx for around 50$ from newegg.  which i've heard mentioned here a 
>> few
>> times. is this card going to produce a decent tv-out signal? and is it
>> naturally supported by xv?
>
> All recent Nvidia cards give you good TV-out.

Not quite so. I had a cheap Jaton GF4MX that produced some very 
noticeable moire patterns when outputting video via S-Video to my HDTV. 
I replaced it with a Chaintech GF4MX, and problem gone.

>> 5.  I've noticed some people saying they get mpeg2 glitches, or 
>> glitchy
>> playback while using timeshifting via livetv.  I'll be buying a new
>> harddrive from this box.  would it make sense to opt for one of the 
>> 8mb
>> cache drives, is that necessary, would it even help?  which is 
>> quieter,
>> seagate or wd?
>
> I'm not sure if this would make a difference. I'm going to have to say 
> it's
> probably worth it to get a drive with an 8 MB cache... There's no 
> point in
> buying old hardware. Oh, and I have a 120 gig Western Digital drive w/ 
> the 8
> MB cache running on my main machine, and it's super quiet!

That wouldn't really make much sense for a separate frontend. The 
frontend needs hardly any drive capacity, very little HD throughput, 
etc. Though if you run both frontend and backend on the same machine, a 
8MB cache drive certainly wouldn't hurt. Not a bad option for the 
backend alone either, but I wouldn't waste the money for such a drive 
in a frontend-only machine.

>> 6. Would an athlon 800 running myth tv, with a wintv freestyle and a 
>> gf2
>> produce quality anywhere near as close to the quality i'm getting 
>> directly
>> from my cablebox now? assuming i'm using svideo in from the box, and
> svideo
>> back out.
>
> I would reasonable doubt you'd get BETTER video quality.
> A find a resolution of 480x480 just about matches my analog cable TV
> quality. That's what I run it at.
> You may have to try running at a higher resolution to match your 
> digital
> cable quality. For this, your Athlon will be able to do it because of 
> your
> PVR250 or Freestyle TV tuner. (I'm running an Athlon XP2000+... I can 
> record
> two shows at once with non hardware mpeg2 tuners.)

I actually get better/cleaner video running through MythTV to my HDTV 
than I do directly from my digital cable box, using a PVR-250 with the 
capture settings at their highest. My system uses an Athlon XP 1700 and 
runs both frontend and backend, but I have a spare Athlon 800 laying 
around that I was about to try setting up as a frontend-only...

> I hope you're able to work with your configuration to successfully 
> create a
> useable and enjoyable MythTV box

Me too!

-jcw