Ok, for starters, I've been using linux, myth, and knoppmyth for a while now, and had really good success using both an ati tv wonder card and a PVR 500. However, for Valentine's day, my wife got me a pcHD3000. Recording runs great. Later playback of those recordings runs great. Watching live TV is choppy and is pretty much a miserable failure. Separate record and playback is just peachy, so it's not a signal problem, nor are the drivers malfunctioning. It's pretty clear there's a performance problem somewhere, but I just can't spot it. I've tried XvMC, not XvMC, every version of the NVidia drivers out there going backwards into the 6000s, all the way up to and including 8756. I've tried running 1280x720 (native projector res) @60p, as well as taking the default install of 1024x768. I've set OpenGL syncing on and off. I've used the configs for the using the sound card in ALSA mode as well as OSS. I'm flat stumped and totally out of ideas. Can anyone think of what I'm missing?

My current config is as follows:
KM R5B7
Asus A8V motherboard
Athlon 3800+X2 dual core processor
2x256MB Kingston PC3200 ValueRam in DualChannel mode
pcHD3000
Chaintech AV710 audio
onboard NIC
Mad Dog AGP 8X GeForceFX5500
InFocus SP5000
Hitachi HDT722516DLAT80 160GB ATA133

#lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 0282
0000:00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 1282
0000:00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 2282
0000:00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3282
0000:00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 4282
0000:00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 7282
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge [K8T800 South]
0000:00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Yukon Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Adapter (rev 13)
0000:00:0c.0 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies Inc. VT1720/24 [Envy24PT/HT] PCI Multi-Channel Audio Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:0e.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Winfast TV2000 XP (rev 05)
0000:00:0e.2 Multimedia controller: Conexant: Unknown device 8802 (rev 05)
0000:00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [K8T800 South]
0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0326 (rev a1)

My previous config (which had the same problem) was as follows:
KM R5B7
Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro2 motherboard
Athlon 3200+
2x256MB Kingston PC3200 ValueRam in DualChannel mode
pcHD3000
Chaintech AV710 audio
Netgear GA311
BFG OC5900 Overclocked GeForceFX5900
InFocus SP5000
Hitachi HDT722516DLAT80 160GB ATA133

I'm going to try the R5C7 release which was just posted too. Thanks in advance for any help.

512 just cant cut it. I pulled a gig of dual channel out of another machine, added it to the 512 that was already there, and now it's somewhat reasonable. A big part of the issue is X has to resize the 1920x1080 signal down to 1280x720, and so it eats memory for breakfast.

top - 00:11:00 up 19 min, 2 users, load average: 2.72, 2.52, 1.67
Tasks: 80 total, 1 running, 79 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 61.3% us, 2.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 35.2% id, 1.0% wa, 0.2% hi, 0.3% si
Mem: 1552436k total, 1518324k used, 34112k free, 4076k buffers
Swap: 795208k total, 0k used, 795208k free, 1217848k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
4793 mythtv 15 0 383m 260m 116m S 77.9 17.2 12:35.23 mythfrontend
4669 root 15 0 272m 140m 98m S 46.3 9.3 7:45.25 XFree86
4510 mythtv 16 0 289m 34m 10m S 1.7 2.2 0:24.88 mythbackend
5021 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 1.7 0.0 0:11.04 cx88[0] dvb

Cheers,
--jm

Live TV definitely doesn't seem to be a strength of Myth. I'm never happy with it either, but I hardly ever WANT to watch live tv. I record everything.
One thing that may help when watching live, is to pause for 10 seconds and then resume. Following 10 sec behind seems to calm things down a lot.

Thorn, I hate to say it, but your negative livetv experience could point to hardware or config issues. I have a PVR350, PVR500, duron 800Mhz, 512 RAM and nvidia FX5200 (running xvmc through and audio control transcoder to a projector). Watch (live) TV works great, it even works great through the Xbox Myth Frontend upstairs in my bedroom. No issues with it.

Now, if there werent so many darned different types of hardware out there, this myth thing would be a lot simpler.

EtherNut

I watch HD exclusively, which is more demanding.

Is your HD-3000 set up as a DVB card? I run my HD3k with 512MB RAM and a P4 3.0 with XvMC on, deinterlace with Bob and it performs great. I am running the 8178 nVidia driver.

_________________
Mike
My Hardware Profile

Yes, but no deint and no XvMC.

Yep, using the DVB interface, and only grabbing the card when it needs it so I can use it for other purposes. The XvMC didn't seem to work too well with either the 5500 or 5900 chipsets, no matter which version of drivers I tried -- might the key be something the 5200 does well that the other chipsets dont?