[mythtvnz] Minimum CPU for FreeviewHD

[Nick Rout]

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Stephen Worthington
<stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:16:33 +1300, you wrote:
>
>>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
>
> I would think that everyone out there who is actually playing TV3 will
> be using VDPAU on an Nvidia GPU.  I am unsure as to why you would not
> want to do that too - it is the obvious solution, and works well.  The
> GPU does not seem to be working too hard doing it, and the CPU
> certainly is not, so the PC can run reasonably cool and not waste too
> much electricity.  All we know about playing TV3 with CPU only is that
> it does not work with a 3 GHz CPU when last tested.  We do not know
> how much more CPU is needed.

I agree, it seems pointless adding more and more cpu power when a gpu
does it so much more efficiently, and everyone says what a wonderful
picture you get with the vdpau deinterlacers too.

Definite change in emphasis on the mythtv users mailing list when
people ask for frontend hardware recommendations now - boards like the
revo and zotac ion make it easy to achieve high quality playback with
low power consumption and low noise factor.

I have also come to the conclusion that a separate beackend is the way to go.