The MythTV Thread

[Jarod Wilson]

On Sun, 2008-11-02 at 14:21 -0400, Tom Metro wrote:
> Jarod Wilson wrote:
> > Rich Braun wrote:
> >> (In my setup, only the Core 2 Quad can handle everything; all the
> >> others have jittery video even with regular DVDs)
> > 
> > ...something's definitely awry if the c2q is the only thing that can
> > handle playback. My daily use frontend machine for bothhdtv
> > playback and ripped dvd playback is a mere 1.66GHz core duo.
> 
> True, given that DVDs are just MPEG2, though they may be high bitrate.
> A MediaMVP with a mere 250MHz PowerPC (supplemented with MPEG2
> hardware acceleration) can play back DVD content fine, usually. Check
> that your LAN isn't getting saturated.

Minor update from my end: my primary frontend is now a core 2 duo at
2.16GHz, in the form of a Dell Studio Hybrid, which I bought refurbished
with a 20% off coupon, for a grand total of $408.64, including tax and
shipping. It can just *barely* handle most (vbr) 1080p h.264 content,
which the mac mini couldn't.

The hybrid is not quite as compact or quiet as the mini, but pretty
close, and the price was certainly right for the increase in horsepower.
The mini now resides upstairs with the broadcom 802.11n card that came
in the hybrid in it, happily streaming hdtv video over 802.11n (although
its doing so under Mac OS X, because broadcom 802.11n support under
Linux, at least w/this particular card, SUCKS (okay, it does w/every n
broadcom card -- you either have to use the semi-open driver
canonical/dell/broadcom put together or ndiswrapper, but this one really
sucks, as it can't do any better than 350KB/s sustained transfer, max of
1.5MB/s, while the exact same hardware under Mac OS X moves ~4.5MB/s no
problem).

Anyhow...

--jarod