[mythtvnz] Nvidia Card with component out

[Nick Rout]

On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Graeme Woollett <g.woollett at irl.cri.nz> wrote:
> On 07/07/10 12:17, Nick Rout wrote:
>>
>>> If he is only using SD what's the point of having VDPAU anyway?
>>>
>> The point is the beautiful picture, even on an old motherboard with a P4 cpu.
>>
>>
>>
> With respect, most  old P4 motherboards have AGP slots which you won't
> find a VDPAU capable graphics card for :-)

Most but not all :) I have a HP/Compaq small form factor box which has
a P4 and a PCIe 16 slot. It has a 8400 card in it and will play 1080p
h264 without breaking sweat.

> Is the quality that VDPAU provides at SD resolution that much better
> then its predecessor?
>

These things are, of course, subjective, but I believe so.

There is no information as to the OP's use case, at least not in this
thread. He may be recording HD. He may have HD material he wishes to
play in mythvideo.

I agree that some of the answers didn't exactly relate to the original
requirement for component out, and I don't know what cards still
support component. Some of the answers state that 8600 and 9400 can,
but of course not all manufacturers will provide the output even if
the GPU can do it.

An HD Fury would also work with an hdmi card, but they are not cheap.
IMHO putting the US$150 or so that an HD Fury would cost towards an
HDMI TV would be a better investment.

But it is becoming noticeably harder to combine the latest video cards
with analogue TV's, and it'll only get harder.

An alternative approach might be to retain the existing video card and
get a Crystal HD accelerator card. They are supported now in XBMC but
not yet in myth. They are mini-pciE so you need either a mini-pciE
slot or a pcie to mini-pciE adaptor card.

As far as the older style XVMC acceleration is concerned, I am unsure
of it's current status in mythtv or in nvidia's drivers. But anyway it
will only accelerate mpeg2, not h.264 or xvid. It always seems to have
been a pig to set up too, but I haven't even thought about it since I
went VDPAU.

There are also murmurings about ATi or intel cards with VAAPI, but I
haven't seen any success stories about this with myth.

I get the distinct impression that the collective state of the mythtv
devs' minds is "we have working GPU acceleration with VDPAU and
therefore we are in no rush to implement VAAPI or Crystal HD, they are
on the list to be done, but we are in no hurry cos there is a working
solution in vdpau"