[mythtv-users] HD-PVR: Answers requested

[Janne Grunau]

On Tuesday 19 August 2008 01:00:47 David Engel wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 08:46:52AM -0700, Robert McNamara wrote:
> > most cases.  Because of the alpha nature of all of this, there is
> > no processor that one can *guarantee* will play all HD-PVR
> > recording smoothly.  A high-spec dual core processor is a fairly
> > good bet, especially with forthcoming changes to libavcodec.  A 3.0
> > Ghz should
>
> Robert, do you have any idea when those libavcodec changes will be
> ready?  I've tried to follow Alexander Strange's GSoC project by
> checking the ffmpeg mailing list archives every few weeks.

The repo of for the frame level multithreading can be found here. 
http://gitorious.org/projects/ffmpeg/repos/ffmpeg-mt. I've just tried 
it and while it utilizes both cores equally with a HD PVR recording it 
has problems to decode the recording correctly.

> The last 
> time I checked, it looked like things were working well but I assume
> all of those changes are still in a GSoC branch of ffmpeg and will
> have to be merged into their trunk before other projects like MythTV
> can start using them.

Depending on how much it changes and how long it takes to go into ffmpeg 
trunk I might merge it earlier into mythtv or have at least a patch.
 
> > Requirement of Windows for firmware install:
> >
> > Yes, this will eventually change when firmware loading is
> > implemented in the driver.  No ETA on this.
>
> When I got my HD-PVR, I saw this in the wiki but decided to first try
> without doing it since I didn't have convenient access to a Windows
> box.  I was able to make recordings and run some other simple tests
> without loading any firmware.  Is loading the firmware still
> necessary or is my Rev C2 HD-PVR a refurbished C1 that someone else
> had already initialized?  I suspect the latter but haven't had time
> to investigate.

The firmware is preloaded in a NAND Flash, Windows is only required to 
upgrade to a new firmware version.

Janne