[mythtv-users] High end, state of the art Myth Frontend

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Andre Newman
<mythtv-list at dinkum.org.uk> wrote:
....
> So I need to replace it and in an antidote to the myriad cheapest, smallest, slowest, can I run it on a calculator threads… I'd like to investigate what is the very best option for a state of the art high end mythfrontend. There is some stuff on the wiki about de-interlacing quality but it doesn't feel very up to date, I follow the mailing list quite well and I don't recall any quality discussion beyond, does it stutter.
>
> I've compared a few uPnP media player devices and I don't find the same video quality as VDPAU with Advanced 2x de-interlacing.
>
> I do have a ~100" projection screen (1080p DLP projector) and I work in Sports TV so if there's an artefact I'll have seen it and it will have annoyed me.

I too get annoyed with artifacts, although many never see them.

> I have almost exclusively HD channels h264 1080i50 and bluray rips but I do get some sports stuff from the states for work which is mpeg2 1080i60, even sometimes glorious 720p60 :-))) I shoot my own sailing video material at 720p60 too, I'm hoping to shoot this at 720p120 next year with a new waterproof camera and new Projector.

Clearly the progressive stuff should not need de-interlacing.

> I was very happy with the GT640 and vdpau although it doesn't ride through recording glitches very well and it can't play a lot of work material due to 4:2:2 coding or too high bitrate. Of course I use proper gear in proper studios but sometimes it's nice to review things at home or work from here.

AFAIK, no (consumer) nVidia card supports 4:2:2 at this time
(I think you could purchase a Quadro card :-)

If one believes that the qvdpautest results reflect reality, a
GT640 would struggle (fail) for 120 Hz content.  You might
want to (eventually) consider an upgrade there.

> The questions:
>
> What is the current best de-interlacer for high motion (sports), is it vdpau advanced 2x or are there opengl equivalents?

Certainly software de-interlacers can be as good as the hardware
ones, at the cost, of course, of more CPU usage, and some of
the software de-interlacers are (or at least were) single threaded,
requiring something more powerful than the lowest end.  nVidia
"PureVideo", which does temporal/spatial de-interlacing, tends
to be quite good, and certainly is power efficient.

> If Opengl is an option does it work well with Intel Haswell or Ivy Bridge integrated GPUs?

I have not seen any hard evals of the new HD Graphics
options for Haswell in regards to Linux support for
de-interlacing (note that the Intel GPU only does limited
de-interlacing, and even then, only on Windows at the
initial release).  For Ivy Bridge there were still some
artifacts mentioned in the reviews.

> Is Interlaced output an option with any modern hardware? DLP & eyeballs de-interlace quite well.

With appropriate options, most all cards can be set
to send out an interlaced signal (and let the TV/DLP
do the de-interlacing).  The X options will vary.

> Is ffmpeg decode as good as vdpau or better?

YMWV (as you have observed).

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