[mythtv-users] minimum specs for PCHDTV-5500?

[Brad DerManouelian]

Mary Strimel wrote:
> Thank you for the quick reply.  My machine has 1 GB of RAM.  Running 
> "cat /proc/cpu" reports an AMD Athlon64 at 800 mhz.  A couple of 
> follow up questions:
>
> -  For recording from QAM / digital cable, can I set a lower 
> resolution in the Mythtv recording profiles, and those settings will 
> actually "take"?  I had no idea ... I thought I was stuck with 
> whatever stream they were transmitting.
Right. You're passed a file, essentially. To change the resolution, you 
would have to transcode after you grab the file.
>
> - I don't know the resolution of the test file , although it was 
> definitely gorgeous, much clearer than SD and played flawlessly.  Is 
> there a tool to find out the resolution of that file?  Is it possible 
> that a computer animated film would be easier to for my cpu to play 
> than live action TV?
mplayer -identify will tell you properties about the file you're trying 
to play. You'll get output something like this:
VIDEO MPEG2(pid=49) AUDIO A52(pid=52) NO SUBS (yet)!  PROGRAM N. 1
ID_VIDEO_ID=49
ID_AUDIO_ID=52
VIDEO:  MPEG2  1920x1080  (aspect 3)  29.970 fps  65000.0 kbps (8125.0 
kbyte/s)
ID_FILENAME=2111_20080308232900.mpg
ID_DEMUXER=mpegts
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=0x10000002
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=65000000
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=1920
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=1080
ID_VIDEO_FPS=29.970
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=0.0000
ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=8192
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=0
ID_AUDIO_RATE=0
ID_AUDIO_NCH=0
ID_LENGTH=1490.21

There's a table here which might help set your expectations on playing 
back HD with your processor:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/XvMC#Example_CPU_Savings

-Brad