[mythtv-users] Unreasonably high CPU usage when playing HD content? Suggestions?

[Rick Hudson]

Jason Keirstead wrote:

> But to my surprise it can't seem to handle HD content. No matter what 
> decoder or deinterlacer I select, I get up to 95%-100% CPU, and the 
> system starts choking.

This sounds almost identical to the problem I'm having. I have a Pentium-M 
1.8GHz CPU and Intgel 82845 GPU and it can play SD video (720x576) with less 
than 10% CPU load. But if I try playing HD it maxes out the CPU.

After some investigation I found I can play up 1024x720 (probably 1024x1024) 
with basically the same CPU load (maybe up to 15%) but as soon as the 
horizontal res goes over 1024 (eg 1152x648) the CPU maxes out.

I think some of the info on http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/XvMC is 
relevant to me where it says that many GPUs only support XV up to 1024x1024. 
After that, I'm assuming, that the video must be scaled in software - hence 
the high CPU load.

What I don't understand though is that my screen size is 1280x720 so I would 
have though it could play that resolution without scaling at all. There is 
obviously something about GPU data transfer I'm missing. Maybe there's a 
playback profile suitable for this unscaled situation that I haven't found yet.

-- 
Rick Hudson