[mythtv-gta]: Re:MythTV Frontend Hardware

[Colin McGregor]

On 6/18/08, Doug Lee <douglee-Ja3L+HSX0kI at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Jun 2008, Colin McGregor wrote:
>
>> On 6/17/08, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>
>>>> Further, the on motherboard nVidia video display is not good enough to
>>>> support the playback of HD content (grumble).
>>>
>>> With or without the nvidia binary only driver?  Using XvMC?
>>
>> That was with the nvidia binary only driver (which the Mythbuntu
>> people appear to hate)
>
>   I have had no problem getting the proprietary driver working on
> Mythbuntu. I could walk you through it if necessary.

There was no real problem installing the proprietary driver, just
repeated warnings re: how they could not support said driver (i.e.:
install not a problem, just made crystal clear they don't like it).

>> and I tried several encoding schemes including
>> XvMC. In all cases I was at best looking at a stuttering video/audio.
>
> I have tried XvMC on both Mythbuntu and Knoppmyth with similar results.
> Yes I get audio stuttering with XvMC on both distros but only when there
> is oncreen text eg: menus or captioning. This applies to both my AMD64
> 2200 (2.2GHz). and dual PIII 1Ghz both using the same MX440AGP-X8 card
> with the driver for the intermediate vintage cards (as opposed to the
> versions for ancient and recent cards). On Knoppmyth I am using whatever
> it came with and on Mythbuntu, the latest driver. The dualPIII is not fast
> enough to do HDTV without XvMC but the AMD64 runs smoothly using the
> standard video decoder even with captioning displayed. The picture DOES
> break up after a few seconds of onscreen menus though. It seems that a
> single core AMD64 is not quite fast enough to do everything perfectly but
> acceptable in a pinch.

I suspect the issue is that the on-board video is @#$%. The
motherboard manual claims a GeForce 6100 video chipset, but it appears
this is the runt of that litter...

> If I underclock the PIII or run it single CPU I always get audio
> stuttering using XvMC but it does work correctly at full speed with
> nothing but video on the screen. Based on this experience, stuttering
> without onscreen text displayed suggests not quite enough CPU power but I
> could be wrong as I don't thoroughly understand XvMC.
>
> P.S. Radeon VE and 9250 cards provide almost exactly the same performance
> as the NVIDIA without XvMC but 3d acceleration (OpenGL-open source driver)
> MUST be configured or there is at least a 30% slowdown. 3d acceleration
> will not work if the NVIDIA driver is installed due to file naming
> conflicts.
>                                     Doug
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