[mythtv-users] video cards, processor, etc.

[Joseph A. Caputo]

Chris Haumesser wrote:

> 
> I have an old Pentium-200 that I want to put to good use for a very 
> limited task, and I'm wondering if it would be up to it.
> 
> On my primary PC, which is a 3.06GHz P4 in my bedroom, I have a number 
> of movies, mp3's, etc.  Upstairs in the living room, we have a TV, 
> stereo etc.  Simply put, I want to use the old P200 to watch music and 
> video upstairs, coming over a network connection from my downstairs PC.
> 
> We don't even have cable, so I am not interested at all in the PVR 
> functionality of Myth, and the P200 would not be used for any encoding 
> whatsoever.  Basically, what I want is a front-end, which looks and 
> behaves similarly to the on-screen menus people are so familiar with on 
> PVRs/VCRs/DVD players, for this weak linux box to play movies and music 
> on the TV/stereo.
> 
> Here are my questions:
> 
> 1.  First of all, would a P200 be capable of decoding/playing 
> high-quality DVD and/or Divx-encoded video, given a sufficient video card?

No. You might be able to get a hardware decoder for the DVD-encoded 
stuff (MPEG-2), but there is nothing you can do for the DivX.  You need 
500MHz as a *bare* minimum; personally, I'd go with at least 750MHz - 
1GHz.  Someone will probably chime in and refute this opinion, though :-)

> 2.  What kind of network bandwidth would be needed?  We currently have 
> 100 Mbps cat5 ethernet, and are planning to add dual-band 802.11a/b 
> wireless.  Ideally, I would like to use the 802.11a (the access point 
> will be in the same room as the P200), which should in theory provide 54 
> Mbps, as wireless would prevent me from having to drill a hole in the 
> living room floor.

For the Divx stuff, you can probably get away with 802.11a, but 54Mbps 
might be a little slim for MPEG-2 transfer, depending on resolution and 
bitrate.


> 3.  What is the best video card (must naturally have TV-out) for this 
> application, in terms of:   a. price (restricted budget);  b. linux 
> compatibility/driver availability/ease of configuration;  c. xv- and 
> general decoding performance?

In general, video cards don't aid in decoding.  The exceptions are the 
PVR-350 (which is not so much a video card as a tuner/hardware MPEG-1/2 
encoder/decoder) and the GeForce4 MX's XvMC extensions (XvMC is *not* 
decoding though; it's merely an accelerator for some output smoothing. 
There is supposedly an MPEG-2 decoder on this card, but the Linux 
drivers don't support it; only Nvidia's Windows-only player supports it 
AFAIK)).

That being said, for economical video cards with TV-out, most folks have 
done well with the GeForce4 MX, or generally any NVidia card.

> 5.  Is there a different app I should consider that doesn't have the PVR 
> features of Myth, which I don't need?  I need something that is very 
> easy to use, functioning like onscreen menus of a VCR or DVD player.  I 
> don't really want to have to teach my roommates how to use Linux to 
> watch movies/play music.

If you don't need the PVR capabilities, you could try Freevo, but you'll 
run into the same problem:  a 200Mhz P-II won't cut it for decoding 
full-screen video at any reasonable resolution.

> 6.  What would be the most efficient file-sharing protocol in this 
> case?  I am tempted to to go with SMB, since I could then make 
> everything available on the network regardless of whether the PC 
> downstairs is booted into Linux or Windows, but I almost always stick to 
> Linux, and I wonder if NFS or some other protocol would provide any 
> efficiency gain?

Hmmm... not really sure on this one.

Good luck,

JAC