[mythtvnz] Help spending my brothers $5K on MythTV

[Steven Ellis]

Steve Hodge wrote:
> On 2/23/06, Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz> wrote:
>   
>> Steve Hodge wrote:
>>     
>>> If you're only recording from Sky Digital you don't need the tuner so
>>> why not get a dumb video capture card instead of a PVR150 (e.g.
>>> http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/en/product/XH6594)?
>>> Certainly 1GHz Athlon should have no problem recording and playing
>>> back at the same time.
>>>       
>> I don't fully concur. The hardware conversion to mpeg2 would be a
>> definite advantage on that system IMHO.
>>     
>
> You mean in terms of CPU usage? I haven't actually tried recording
> with a dumb capture card on anything that low-end, but my 2GHz Sempron
> happily records from two dumb tuner cards and plays back at the same
> time.
>   
What are you capturing at resolution/codec/bitrate wise. Personally I've
never been happy with the RTJpeg based captures. MPEG2 off the PVR cards
looks a lot better. Perhaps i'm more fussy about the quality of the
video than other people on the net. I personally feel that the current
attempts at HDTV are too low quality wise. The 1080i and 720p footage
i've seen is still too blocky due to artifacts. Something in the 2-4000
range might persuade me which is the sort of resolution they are using
for digital cinema.

Steve