[mythtv-users] Hardware Sanity Check

[Paul Bender]

Paul Bender wrote:
> VIA EPIA boards with the CLE266 (e.g. VIA EPIA M series) can only do SD 
> hardware MPEG2 decoding. This is supported by Openchrome drivers, 
> MPlayer, Xine and MythTV
> 
> VIA EPIA boards with the CN400 (e.g. VIA EPIA SP series) can do HD 
> hardware MPEG2 decoding and have some hardware MPEG4 accelaration. 
> However, the MPEG4 accelaration is not supported by the Openchrome 
> drivers, and the HD MPEG2 using the MPEG2 hardware decoding is broken in 
> MythTV.

I forgot to mention some HD stuff related to video output.

Even though EPIA boards with the CN400 can decode HD (once the problems 
with MythTV are fixed), then cannot necessarily output HD using the TV 
output. For that, the board needs an HD capable TV encoder chip. The VIA 
EPIA SP series does not have one. The VIA EPIA equivalent board from 
Commell does have the HD capable TV encoder as does the VIA EPIA EN 
series board. However, while there has been off and on work to get the 
HD capable TV encoder working in the Openchrome drivers, I do not 
believe that it is done yet.

One might consider using the DVI output using the DVI addon module, but 
I do not believe that is supported by the Openchrome driver.

That leaves VGA, which is what I use. However, the picture quality usin 
the DVI on my ASUS board is better than using either the VGA on my VIA 
board or the VGA on my ASUS board.