[mythtv-users] hd-pvr playback plans - sanity check

[Ron Garrison]

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 7:06 AM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> On Thursday 19 November 2009 08:01:44 James Orr wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 12:35 AM, Mike Schiller
>> <mdschiller.mythtv at gmail.com
>>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > I have an older frontend box that I would like to upgrade so that it
>> > could playback recordings from my HD-PVR. The processor is an Athlon
>> > 64 2800+ running at 1.8 GHz, and the motherboard has a PCIE x16 (it's
>> > not a PCIE 2 motherboard).
>> >
>> > From what I've read in a few threads, including this one
>> > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/407875 , I think I
>> > should be able to get good HD playback of the recordings if I upgrade
>> > my video card to:
>> > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187034
>> >
>> > But, as my processor is pretty old, and rather underpowered, I'm
>> > looking for feedback from the community to see if anyone has had
>> > success with similar hardware.
>>
>> I have an AMD Sempron 3000+ (also 1.8 GHz) on my frontend which I run with
>> VDPAU and this card ...
>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814139018
>>
>> It works flawlessly on recordings from my HDHR, I don't have an HD-PVR so I
>> can't speak for that but I imagine it wouldn't be much different.
>
> It might be. HDHR recordings are MPEG2, and the HD-PVR records in h264, which
> takes a lot more oomph to decode, but with VDPAU it's mostly happening in the
> GPU anyway.
>
> --


My understanding (and experience from my setup) is that VDPAU (Feature
set A) is better on h.264 than Mpeg2, because it decodes h.264
completely in hardware, whereas for MPEG2 its only partial.  I got
this info from the VDPAU section of wikipedia.

Ron