[mythtv-users] TiVo Convert Experience - HDTV Video Card Recommendation

Jim Shank jim.shank at gmail.com
Wed May 2 21:10:40 UTC 2007


A little over a month ago, in an effort to move away from my DirecTiVo I
decided to give MythTV a try. I recently upgraded my main PC and decided to
allocate my old development box to this project. It consists of:
ASUS K8V SE Deluxe motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
2GB RAM
ATI X850PRO (AGP)
500GB SATA HD

After fighting with Debian for a while, I decided to start over with Fedora
Core 6 based on my previous experience with RedHat distro and got Myth .20
up and running based on using Jarod Wilson's fantastic guide. My first
dedicated purchase to this system was a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 MCE to add
some capture and remote capabilities. I picked up a cheap Radio Shack
antenna so I could start to get a feel for how MythTV compared to my
long-standing affair with TiVo. I was immediately impressed with the overall
flexibility of the system while it was in my "lab" and decided to move it to
the living room for a test run with the real critic (read Wife). I am sure
quite a few of you have better-halves that require technology to "just-work"
and mine is no exception. She has been in love with the TiVo since I won a
unit in a TiVo essay contest when she was pregnant almost 7 years ago. 

The main thing I have been showing her is the MythTV's ability to store our
series DVD's on the hard drive and she can pull them up anytime she wants.
This was a big hit but she immediately pointed out that it wouldn't resume
like the old DVD player did. I know this is a feature of the Internal player
but I can't get it to handle aspect ratio correctly yet so I am still using
xine which appears to have no resume capabilities at all but handles the
aspect nicely. 

A few days ago she suggested that it is time to retire our 13-year old TV in
favor of an LCD HDTV. I was floored and elated at the request and
immediately started research. This of course puts an acceleration on my
MythTV project which I was originally taking very slowly but want to take
full advantage of 1080p on the new TV which leads me to asking for a
recommendation for a video card that will properly drive the new display.

I can't begin to explain the suffering I went through in order to get the
ATI card to work at 640x480 via S-Video on my existing TV and still have
bowed edges to the picture. I have spent the last 5-hours Googling MythTV HD
and have determined that an nVidia card is the way to go. The FX5200 seems
to be the de-facto standard but there are some complaints about not being
able to keep up with 1080i/p. The 6200 is rumored to handle the resolution
better but appears to have problems with video-overlay namely the lack of
OSD colors. It also seems that anything above that is a waste since this is
a 2D application and the system won't be used for anything beyond that. I
would appreciate a recommendation please.

I am also replacing the Dual-Tuner DirecTiVo which has worked extremely
well. It really takes tweaking the heck out of MythTV to really appreciate
the "polished" look and feel of the TiVo interface. I am likely going to buy
the HDHomeRun to secure local OTA HD programming which covers the basics;
NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX. I will also need to downgrade my DirecTiVo receiver
to a regular one and would love to get a recommendation there as well for
which unit to buy off of eBay. Depending on the overlap between the local DT
broadcasts and DirecTV, I might be able to get away with only a single unit
connected to my PVR-150 and not miss any shows.

Summarizing the actual questions in my long-winded post:
1. How can I correct the DVD playback aspect ratio in the Internal player
(tried the menus but nothing changed)?
2. Recommendation for a video card that will work well with MythTV and can
handle 1080p through a DVI connection.
3. Recommendation for a DirecTV receiver (cheap) that works extremely well
with MythTV (serial control). Are there any with 1394 video connections?
4. Any complaints about HDHomeRun or is that a solid investment?

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing some feedback.




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