[mythtv-users] Upgrade to HDTV from SDTV Question, 1.5 year old system

Chad masterclc at gmail.com
Sun Jan 21 19:53:10 UTC 2007


On 1/21/07, Bob Sully <rcs at malibyte.net> wrote:
>
> David Krainess wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > I was thinking of buying a HD-5500 card
> > and adding it to the PVR250 on my existing system.
> >
> > So....
> >
> > 1.) Will the Venice 3000 work or,
> > 2.) Should I upgrade to a more powerful 939 socket processor, or,
> > 3.) Will I have to upgrade the whole darn thing.
> >
> > I thought I read back when I bought it you need 3ghz to run HDTV.
> > UnTechnically, the Venice was marketed a comparable to a 3ghz Intel,
> > cough, at that time.  However the marketing numbers and reality are
> > somewhat confusing.  More so am I confused by the ghz number today not
> > meaning as much as efficient processor design, instructions per second,
> > multi cores,  and 45 nanoblah die size yada yada yada
>
> I have a socket 754 "3400+" (2.4GHz), "minimally" overclocked (a few
> percent), with 2G RAM and an nVidia 6200 series video card.  I'm doing HD
> with it at 1280x720 (720p), and it works pretty well; I see occasional
> "prebuffering pauses" but they're not really noticeable.  Top says I'm
> using anywhere from 25-40% of the CPU on playback.  I did have to use make
> sure I did all of the tweaks possible with the proprietary nVidia driver
> to get it to play 720p HD content cleanly.  I haven't tried it at 1080i
> yet (the small text and interlacing are unacceptable when using it as a
> computer rather than a DVR),  and my TV won't do 1080p.
>
> Short answer:  It may be OK depending on your video card and supporting
> configuration, but you're on the edge.
>
> > Also, do you need CPU cycles for recording or playing of HD (with the
> > HD-5500)?  I keep reading mixed information on this.
>
> Playback.
>
> > Any help greatly appreciated.
>
> HTH
> Bob
>
> --
> ________________________________________

To add to Bob's comments:

Using a AMD 64 3200 ( AM2 ), I can get HDTV playback with both 720 and
1080i sources.  This is using an Nvidia 6150 chipset, and the latest
(9xxx series) NVidia drivers, and throwing into the Device section:
Option "UseEvents" "True"
I do not have to use XvMC, though it's an option if your 3000 isn't
quite sufficient.  It's also running 1GB of RAM, and in the BIOS 128MB
are dedicated to video.

Definitely playback, your HD tuner will simply be 'stream dumping'
which is hard drive intensive, but any modern hard drive should easily
be able to keep up with that.  Everything else is playback intensive.
Somewhat unrealistically, you may be able to "capture" HD from the
5500 on a P3 with 128MB of RAM.  It's the playback where the CPU gets
hammered.

-Chad

-- 
Prebuilt HDTV capable systems at reasonable prices:
http://www.pauselivetv.com


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