[mythtv-users] HD playback using on-board nVidia

[Howard Cokl]

--- Peter Judge <peter at judge.co.za> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Has anyone succeeded in getting HD to work with an
> onboard MX440, using Myth?
> 
> I've got a Shuttle SN41G2V2B, which has the nVidia
> gForce MX440 on-board video card, and 512MB RAM. AMD
> 2500+ processor. I'm on 0.17 from ATRPMS, and using
> the 7174 drivers.
> 
> I've recently hooked my box up to my STB via
> firewire*. When I do the test capture using
> test-mpeg2, I can play back the HD content (PBSHD,
> which is 1080i) using mplayer. I get great picture
> and also get sound. CPU seems to be at about 60% for
> HD, and way down for SD. The only problem seems to
> be that there's blue-ish ghosting in some of the
> picture (noticable on ESPNHD, watching basketball).
> 
> When I try to watch HD using Myth, I get skippy
> picture (i.e. it seems to jump/skip over certain
> frames), although otherwise the picture seems good,
> and no sound. Well, every now and then I get sound,
> but it's basically just a crackle every couple of
> minutes. CPU is way up when I do this (can't
> remember exactly at what level now, but high, like
> 80 or 90 % CPU).
> 
> In both cases Mythbackend was running, although I
> will say that there wasn't a lot going on when I did
> my mplayer test, and when I tested through Myth
> there was a lot of activity (mythtranscode was
> running vigourously).
> 
> Reading this list, it seems the CPU is underpowered
> for a front/back machine; maybe it's worth getting a
> separate backend.
> 
> My original question was going to be: is it possible
> to play back HD with the hardware I have, but I
> guess I proved that already. So now I'd like to
> know, has anyone successfully managed to get HD
> working with a config  roughly like mine? And also,
> is it a good idea adding a new video card (which I
> can now do, because I can remove my PVR250 because
> of the firewire capture)? Is what I'm seeing
> expected, in line with others' experiences? 
> 
> Regards,
> Peter
> 
> * And many thanks to the devs for making it
> possible, and to Axel and Jarod's guide for making
> it so easy.

I have a combined back/front using an MSI K7N2 mobo
with an athlon 2700+, 512MB of ram, using atrpms .17
and nvidia 7174, onboard geforce4 mx - out VGA to
AA9a60, and a pcHDTV 3K.  I can watch live TV, don't
recall the load off the top of my head.  I'm no expert
but I would look at first making an HD recording and
trying to watch that and narrow your problem down that
way,  Also may want to look at the frontned settings,
things like openGL (I'm using), xvmc (not using).  I
had to do some linking in order to get glx to load in
X.  grep -i glx /var/log/Xorg.0.log and look for and
nvidia EE.

Howard