[mythtv-users] Advice on Proposed setup UK DVB-T

Steve Smith st3v3.sm1th at gmail.com
Fri Feb 15 12:54:10 UTC 2008


On 15/02/2008, Nicolas Will <nico at youplala.net> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 2008-02-15 at 11:10 +0000, Adam Retter wrote:
> > So for playback and converting to DivX etc I will need to process the
> > streams in software, what should I be thinking of in terms of CPU
> > power for this?
> >
>
> for playback, not much.
>
> for converting, well how long do you want to spend converting?
>
> My guess is that you should buy a dual-core machine, this will allow
> your machine to safely do a few things at the same time (playing,
> converting, recording, etc...), and get the fastest thing you want to
> pay for in order to future-proof your system (HD comes to mind).
>
> Nico
>
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Adam,

I think the key thing here is ..... * UK * . Here in the UK we don't really
have HD yet (apart from limited Sky and Virigin services & then you don't
get the raw digital signal). So unless you're downloading it HD playback
probably isn't required. SD only is all that's needed.

Basically for what you're proposing you can get away with a PIII probably
700Mhz plus....
(I run a 933Mhz and many others do also).

Obviously this won't be capable of playing HD and transcoding to XviD/DivX
will take a few hours...
X.263 playback....not sure never tried it.
DivX/XviD playback... easy!

If you want to play HD then you need something more modern and chunky
probably a dual core etc.

My take is this...... you could buy something capable of HD right now for X
quid.
                             or wait until HD is more commonly available
upgrade and pay X/2 quid (+acceleration will probably be better).

So if I were doing this (and it's my personal opinion) I'd go for a low
powered box, either a P3 from ebay or one of the more modern lower powered
CPUs. (BTW if you want the green angle... Of the energy used during the
lifecycle of a PC roughly 80% is consumed during the manufacturing only 20%
during use, so reusing that old PC really is green!)

Of course if super fast transcoding is required or you really want to play
HD right now or play games etc then get yourself some dual core action...

Cheers

Steve
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