[mythtv-users] TV out for unlisted card?

[Rod Smith]

On Sunday 01 April 2007 23:56, Angus wrote:
> Rod Smith wrote:
>
> > That said, I can say with certainty that I've used two cards based on
> > nVidia MX4000 chipsets in a MythTV box. Both worked fine for SD, although
> > one
>
>     Chipsets?? There's more than one MX4000 chipset?

Not AFAIK, although there are probably revision levels, and each manufacturer 
can tweak the surrounding circuits to suit their own purposes.

> > produced blue screens when playing back HD content at SD resolutions.
> > Whether
>
>     Blue screens? Isn't that an MS-Windows thing?

Not BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), but literally a blue screen rather than 
displaying video.

> > they'd be fast enough on your 800MHz system, though, I cannot say, as my
> > system has a 3.06GHz Celeron-D CPU.
>
>     Well, they seem more reasonably priced for what I want to do. If you
> think they'll do the trick, then I'll try for one of those instead of an
> FX 5200.

I honestly don't know how the XvMC support of the MX4000 is different from the 
FX5200. Also, I wouldn't go so far as to say I "...think they'll do the 
trick..." -- your 800MHz CPU is pretty borderline, in my estimation. It might 
be fine, or you might end up with stuttering video. Mind you, I've never 
tried building a MythTV box around such a CPU; I'm just extrapolating from my 
3.06GHz system and the CPU loads I see on it.

> > Your card is clearly listed there as a software encoder card. It'll
> > consume most of your available 800MHz CPU to encode video. In fact, an
> > 800MHz CPU may be inadequate for some resolutions, quality settings, etc.
>
>     Well, fortunately I didn't get into this racket for the capturing
> anyway, just the playback. Unfortunately, this means I wasted money on a
> card that didn't even have TV out. But since I haven't even got the
> playback part off the ground, I think I'll just concentrate on that for
> now.

I assume this means you're intending to use some other video source -- 
Internet downloads, DVDs, or whatever. Such sources might or might not use 
the MPEG-2 encoding for which XvMC support can be useful.

-- 
Rod Smith
http://www.rodsbooks.com