[mythtv-users] New user questions

[Tom Marshall]

First an introduction:

I heard about MythTV a few weeks ago and decided it would make a really cool
project.  I have a cute little mini-desktop machine with an i810 chipset and
tv-out that I thought would make a perfect little "convergence" device.  It
is a bit short on CPU power for transcoding (466MHz) but I'm willing to
spring for a hardware MPEG card.

For the initial setup, I just slapped an old Hauppauge WinTV (bt878) card
into the machine and started trying to get MythTV setup.  The initial
compile and install had a few minor bumps (hey, where is my mouse cursor?)
but I got them sorted out quickly.  It was really cool to see MythTV come
up.  Such a slick interface.  And the MythNews and MythWeather modules are
also very well done.  But playing anything -- including MythVideo -- gave me
a pretty blue screen.  After digging around in the archives, I found the
i810 patch and applied it.  Now only the right 1/4 of the screen was blue. 
More digging and apparently it's caused by 800x600 mode.  Switch to 640x480
and it's gone.  But the screen now only covers 3/4 of the display, leaving
a big ugly black border.  Found the 'control' program and switched the
display into a nice overscan mode.

The only remaining problem is the load average shoots up to 3 or 4 when I'm
watching live tv at 160x160 (the lowest available resolution).  But 'top'
says the CPU is around 30-35% idle.  Where is the load coming from?  Disk
activity?  Interrupts?

Now I'm fully aware that my lowly 466MHz CPU is completely inadequate for
doing software based "live tv" transcoding.  So I'm looking for suggestions
for hardware cards.  I initially heard great things about the PVR-[23]50
cards, but after reading this list for a while, it seems the ivtv driver is
pretty alpha quality right now.  Reading through the ivtv FAQ, it says that
data sheets are available for most (all?) of the components except the "iTVC
codec".  What is this codec, and how much trouble is it causing for the
driver writers?

What other hardware encoding/decoding solutions are out there?  Are ivtv
based cards the only option in Linux right now?

-- 
Meekness:  Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
        -- Ambrose Bierce
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