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

Ron Garrison ron.garrison at gmail.com
Thu Nov 19 16:39:30 UTC 2009


On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Ron Garrison <ron.garrison at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>


I will add that the video card that Jame's listed above appears to
have feature set B (where mine has feature set A).  Feature set B i
supposed to have complete acceleration for both MPEG2 and H.264, but
appear's to have some limitations on certain H.264 widths.

Ron


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list