[mythtvnz] HD Video jerky...

[Nick Rout]

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 7:20 PM, Graeme Woollett
<graeme.joy at paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> On 13/08/11 16:58, Steve Hodge wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 15:43, Worik Stanton <worik.stanton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> There does seem to be a consensus that my computer is too slow.  Ok.
>>
>> Also someone mentioned that I could get an Nvidea card that would handle
>> the decoding.
>>
>> What is the best approach?  Getting a brand new box is too expensive for
>> me right now so I would be buying an ex-lease or second hand.  How do I
>> judge that a machine has sufficient resources?
>>
>> If I go the video card route where is the best place to get info about
>> how to use a card and with the plethora of busses how do I make sure I
>> get one that will fit in my machine?
>
> What video card is in your machine now? Is it an AGP card or PCIe? If it's
> PCIe then you should have no trouble getting a VDPAU capable card. If your
> machine doesn't have PCIe then you need either an AGP or PCI video card and
> I think you'll find it much harder to find one that's VDPAU capable.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve
>
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> Get a PCI-E M/B with Core2Duo or AMD AM3 X2 with a GT220 or better GPU.

the existing motherboard will be fine if it has PCI-E and the physical
space to house a video card (I run a similarly specced machine, P4
2.4GHZ hyperthreaded with a GT220 silent video and it works fine [1]).

A new machine might give lower power consumption but the OP says he
has a limited budget.

If the existing machine has only got AGP and/or PCI then the options
are more limited. There are no AGP cards that will do vdpau. There are
some 8400 cards with PCI bus, but they aren't always easy to find, and
if you have material that is not compatible with vdpau (eg xvid) then
your PCI bus can get saturated - the CPU has to decode and send the
decoded (ie large) video stream over PCI to the video card.

If getting another machine, a $500 REVO off trademe might be an
option. They are being sold there at all sorts of prices, up to
$800ish, but if you are patient you will find better value ones in the
high $400's or $500. Make sure it has 2G ram minimum and devote 512M
to video.

[1] Well I haven't had it running since the earthquake as we are one
TV down, but it did work fine.