[mythtvnz] Minimum CPU for FreeviewHD

[Aaron Whitehouse]

Hello again,

Steven Ellis wrote:
> I've got HD playback working on an Athlon X2 6000+ but it isn't reliable 
> with occasional issues on TV3. The biggest problem is finding a CPU 
> where you don't end up with your fan running at full speed

Geoff wrote:
 > I'm using CPU only on 2 machines, both with Nova T-500's
 > 1st is a Core2 e7200 (2.54Ghz)
 > 2nd is a Core e8400 (3.0Ghz)
 > I thought I could get away with having the loop filter on for TV1 on
 > the 3Ghz box, but just isn't quite enough depending on the bit rate of
 > the stream that coming in. It's fine with it off.

I noticed that we now have quite a few Athlon II x2s available in NZ, 
which are based on the Phenom II core. My understanding is that these 
have significant performance improvements over the Athlon Is.

My hope is that, if an Athlon I 3GHz could nearly play 1080i TV3, some 
of the new Athlon IIs would be able to play it properly. Steven, I 
assume that you had the loop filter off to get it to work anywhere near 
okay?

If you look at some of the benchmarks, the new 3GHz Athlon IIs do look 
better:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=96&p2=28&c=1

I was originally considering the 240e, but the 255 seems to have a lower 
idle power (it is slightly higher on full), obviously has .3 GHz more 
power and seems cheaper than the energy-efficient chips (only the 235e 
is available here anyway):
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=114&p2=121&c=1

Does anybody out there have one of the new Athlon IIs? It would be great 
to know if the 240, 250 or 255 can handle TV3.

Also, what's the current status of FreeviewHD playback in 0.22, as in 
Mythbuntu 9.10? As far I can see from the samples, they work fine, but 
my CPU isn't good enough -- I thought I read something on here though 
about a patch that still needs to go upstream.

Finally, does anybody know if any of the ffmpeg-mt patches have made it 
into ffmpeg mainline? There doesn't seem to be any information available 
except for the Git summary, which I'm not very good at reading. As far 
as I can tell, only a very small amount of the decoding needs to be 
multithreaded for it to work.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Aaron