[mythtvnz] A few MythTV questions

[Steven Ellis]

On 14/10/2008, at 9:51 AM, Nick Rout wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 9:13 PM, Aaron Whitehouse
> <lists at whitehouse.org.nz> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I have been trying to figure out a few things and I was hoping that
>> people on this list could help me:
>>
>> 1. I am running Myth on a 2.4 GHz P4 with an nVidia GeForce 4 Ti. I  
>> am
>> keen to set up Freeview on my machine (sound on the analogue and the
>> lack of a proper aspect ratio definition are pretty annoying), but  
>> have
>> been waiting to see what happens with the hardware-accelerated H.264
>> decoding.
>
> What hardware h.264 acceleration? There is no such thing in linux. For
> reasons why not, go ask nVidia.
>
>> It recently occurred to me that my machine may not be powerful
>> enough, even if everything was fully accelerated. I could upgrade the
>> graphics to anything else AGP. Am I likely to be able to play H.264  
>> on
>> this machine if everything goes well, or should I just settle on  
>> MPEG-2?
>>
>
> depends if you want to get HD or not. If you are happy with SD your
> machine is fine, and you will need a satellite dish. If you want HD
> you need DVB-T and a very grunty machine as well as the latest patches
> from Paul Kendall (see other threads).
>
>> 2. Has anyone got 5.1 sound working? Is the way that people are doing
>> this using S/PDIF over coax/optical? How well does the S/PDIF
>> pass-through work with recent distributions?
>
> Mine has always worked fine.

Same here

>
>
>> Most guides that I have
>> found are quite old.  I assume that the S/PDIF carries a digital  
>> signal
>> encoded in AC3 or PCM.
>
> by definition I think spdif must be ac3 or pcm

Or DTS

Some Amps won't accept anything other than 44.1 and 48KHz PCM which  
can cause issues with some internet streams, but otherwise no issues.

>
>
>> Is there some negotiation between the card and
>> the computer that lets the computer figure out which formats it can
>> pass-through and which have to be re-encoded into formats that the
>> stereo etc. can support? Do you set all of that manually?
>>
>
> I think myth does it all in software, it passes ac3 and pcm streams
> through. other codecs it presumably converts to pcm (as it would have
> to do for analogue output anyway). Most decent digital input
> amplifiers will mix sound so it comes out all speakers.
>
>> 3. Does anyone know of anyone that does cheap, but decent, Freeview
>> satellite installations? Surely some student or something is doing it
>> for some extra cash? The best that I have found so far is someone who
>> will install your satellite for $150 - then I could get one of  
>> TradeMe
>> for ~$100.

$150 is cheap for a professionally aligned dish install with dish and  
LNB.

>>
>>
>
> In ChCh I use Ascot Electronics http://www.ascot.net.nz/ . In fact
> they are coming to install at my new place today.
>
> I bought a dish from here: http://www.freeviewshop.co.nz/

I highly recommend Lars at freeviewshop for both equipment and  
instructions

Steve


Steven Ellis - Technical Director
OpenMedia Limited
email   - steven at openmedia.co.nz
website - http://www.openmedia.co.nz

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