Hardware for pvr

[Jason Shein]

On March 11, 2005 10:39 pm, Mailing List wrote:
> I know, it.s been beaten to death.  I was wondering if the
> bellow system is powerful enough to handle myth TV encoding
> and streaming video for MPEG-4.  The TV card I might
> use will not have hardware encoding on it.  Is mythTV the
> most widely used pvr software?
>
> 1600 for a pvr / media center sounds expensive :-(
>
>
> The system will likely be something like the bellow
> system.  Is this overkill?
> $389.99   Shuttle® SB77G5 Pentium® 4 Socket 775
> $324.99   Intel® Pentium® 4 -630, 3.0-GHz @ 800Mhz w/ 2Mb
>           EM64T XD (Socket 775)  w/ Heat Sink & Fan
> $199.99   1Gb DDR SDRAM Ram Module, PC3200
> $199.99   (2) 250GB Maxtor SATA-150 7200RPM 16Mb 9ms OEM
>  $79.99   Leadtek® WinFast® TV2000 XP Expert (PCI)
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> $1394.94
>   $97.65
>  $111.60
> =========================================================
> $1604.19  Total
> http://sys.us.shuttle.com/BarebonePromos/index.htm
>
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I am currently using a cheap AthlonXp 1600, with a Hauppauge Hardware MPEG 
card, and it works extremey well running MythTV or Freevo. Look into the 
hardware database for othe configurations people are using.

Pay the extra for a Haupauge card, the 250 or 350 PVR cards are best.

I also recommend ( what will be in my next PVR ) a VIA EPIA S motherboard. 

Look at http://www.viavpsd.com/product/epia_sp_spec.jsp?motherboardId=261

on board MPEG2 & MPEG4 decoding reduces cpu usage.

-snip-

The VIA EPIA SP mainboard introduces the VIA CN400 Digital Media chipset to 
the Mini-ITX form factor for the first time, extending the feature set of the 
VIA EPIA Mini-ITX family to include support for DDR266/333/400 and even 
greater digital media performance on the rapidly emerging new generation of 
smart digital entertainment devices such as PVRs, set top boxes, and media 
centers. Targeting x86 consumer electronics devices, the Chromotion CE Video 
Display Engine of the S3 Graphics UniChrome™ Pro IGP graphics core features 
hardware-based MPEG-2 decoding and MPEG-4 acceleration for smooth playback of 
the most popular video formats,together with Adaptive De-Interlacing and 
Video De-Blocking advanced video rendering functions for unequalled image 
crispness.

-snip-


-- 
Jason Shein
Director of Networking, Operations and Systems
Detached Networks
jason-xgs8i/e9EeWTtA8H5PvdGCwD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
( 905 ) - 876 - 4158 Voice
( 905 ) - 876 - 5817 Mobile
http://www.detachednetworks.ca
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
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