[mythtv-users] What hardware do I need to be able to dual record using Comcast cable?

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Thu Oct 16 15:16:57 UTC 2008


Greg Woods wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 08:25 -0600, Brian Wood wrote:
> 
>>> My FE is a P4 3.0 and it is enough for playing HD (720p & 1080i), it is
>>> JUST enough, so before you buy newer hardware first check. Also what you
>>> can do is make your P4 be a BE only where a P4 is plenty and but new FE.
>> Do you have to use XvMC to get your 3Ghz. cpu to do HD?
> 
> I've got a similar setup, and yes, I do have to use XvMC to get HD
> playback (from an HDHomerun) to work. I have a Hauppage HD-PVR box too
> but I haven't tried using it yet (haven't had time to try reinstalling
> Myth from source). It's on my list to try some of the HD-PVR clips that
> are out there to see how they playback on my system. I also got much
> better playback without sacrificing quality when I switched the X server
> to 720p from 1080i, since that's what my TV actually is anyway. Prior to
> that, I had lots of "prebuffering pause" problems and playback was
> choppy. Bottom line: it can be done with a 3Ghz P4, but it takes a lot
> of fiddling to make it work. I ended up trying several versions of the
> Nvidia drivers before I found one that worked well; it was a royal pain
> and took a lot of time to get right.
> 
> I have never gotten firewire (from a DCT-6400) to work reliably. Channel
> changing works fine, so I know the device is properly detected and
> configured. But recordings sometimes work and sometimes don't. When they
> do, the quality is as good as the HDHomerun, but it's not reliable
> enough to use in practice. Firewire is another thing that's a royal
> pain. Some people have it working well, but there are so many variables
> that it's a crap shoot as to whether it will work on your system.
> 
> So I'm wondering: what are people using that's better than a P4? Do you
> have to go to a 64 bit processor?

I suspect that going to 64-bits will not help all that much, at least
that was the consensus a year ago or so. It might help eventually, when
more things are optimized for 64-bits.

I'm also not sure if dual-core vs. faster single-core is the better way
to go. As with 64-bits, as time goes on more and more things will be
better able to take advantage of multi-thread.

But if nobody uses 64-bits and/or multi-core, the development along
those lines will take longer.

beww


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