OT: Video signal on monitors

[Peter L. Peres]

On Tue, 6 Jan 2004, Matthew Godycki wrote:

> So now for the million dollar question... Do you think it would be
> worthwhile to try a bttv based card?

You might already have one. Look in the system logs (kmesg etc) after
loading the viewer. If it says something like bttv.o: yada yada then you
have.

The bttv chip requires a very fast machine for reasonable full screen
video in a window (not overlay). It uses no ram (it borrows ram from the
system via PCI bus). If you use it on a cheap system which also uses
system ram for video (all those all-in-one boards) then it will frame drop
like crazy. Overlays will still be clean.

> Alternatively, would using some sort of video (svideo/composite) input
> on a normal video card be a better solution for connecting other devices
> to the monitor (obviously this wouldn't work for the tv tuner aspect).

Very definitely yes. Regard the internal tuner as a gimmick.

Peter
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