[mythtv-users] Why use PVR 350 TV-out? (Was: X and PVR 350)

[John Harvey]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org [mailto:mythtv-users-
> bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Niklas Brunlid
> Sent: 28 January 2005 21:51
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Why use PVR 350 TV-out? (Was: X and PVR 350)
> 
> On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 21:41:11 +0100, Didde Brockman
> <didde.brockman at starring.se> wrote:
> 
> > This question is very interesting. I have a TV-out on my nVidia GPU but
> > I just recently got the TV-out on the Hauppage to work well - thanks to
> > a miracle as I had tried it four times already without success. I
> > haven't tried playing a DVD-rip, Xvid, DivX or anything but "TV"
> > through the box. Are you guys saying that a AMD64 2800+ will have
> > problems coping with the copying of data from and to the PVR-350's in /
> > out? If that's the case then I seriously wonder why one would ever buy
> > a 350 as opposed to a 250.
> 
> As stated earlier in the thread, my P4 2.4GHz has no problems with this,
> so an AMD64 2800+ shouldn't either. The data is certainly copied fast
> enough that no frames are dropped. And IIRC the copy is done with DMA so
> the CPU is free to do other things, like decode the next frame.
> 
> What the 350 can't do is update separate sections of the screen without
> refresing all of it, which makes it bad for stuff like playing games or
> showing MythMusic visualizations. This may be a driver issue though.
> 
> / Niklas
Not entirely true. The latest driver does update sections of the screen. It
is not as good as it could be but I need to add a better interface to the
ivtv driver for the X driver to use. 

Mythmusic visuals when running in the window under the playlist are pretty
reasonable. Running them full screen requires virtually all of the screen to
be updated so they run slower.

John