The MythTV Thread

[Jarod Wilson]

On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 13:02 -0800, basskozz wrote:
> 
> Jarod Wilson wrote:
> > 
> > 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.
> Hi Jarod,
> 
> Can you please elaborate on "It can just *barely* handle most (vbr) 1080p
> h.264 content" ?

Most h.264 stuff can still only be played back using single-threaded
decoding right now, due to limitations in the x264 libs. Work is
underway to remedy that so that, for example, both cores of a dell
studio hybrid, could be used for decode, at which point, there'd be no
problem whatsoever.

By 'just *barely*', I mean one core is pretty much pegged during
playback, and there's an occasional stutter.

> I was planning on building a mythtv system for a friend
> (1xbackend-6xfrontends) and I was going to use the "Dell Studio Hybrid" for
> the frontends but I am concerned about it's ability to playback HD 1080p
> video.

Keep in mind that its only an issue for h.264 1080p content, 720p is
fine. HDTV over the air and off cable is mpeg2, and 1080i at most. And
decoding that is much less work than h.264 -- and can be done w/multiple
cores, so HDTV playback is no problem at all.

> I wish Dell would make a version of the Studio Hybrid with a Nvidia graphics
> card that could take advantage of the new 
> http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13102 VDPAU drivers , the 
> http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13109 benchmarks  look SWEET.

Yep, vdpau is slick, I'd probably do an nvidia hybrid if there were one
too.

--jarod