Just a stupid question,

if I'm changing my video card for one with a mpeg-2 decoder,

will mythfrontend use the hardware decoder feature ?

and if yes what is the best buy as video card with a tv out cheaper than the Hauppauge 350 ?

Thanks in advance

Yohan

well first off the only video card I know of with mpeg2 decoding is the via onboard on the epia boards, and that one uses a special binary kernel drivers that doesn't work with knoppmyth, other than that the nvidia boards gf4mx and above support xvmc which is motion compensation in hardware, which is mpeg2 hardware assist I guess you would call it.

Free MPEG2 decoder driver for VIA EPIA-M boards are available at http://www.ivor.it/cle266/ Can we have them in Knoppmyth to take advantage of it ? I believe the kernel has to provide some services for it to work. I have downloaded the patch for 2.4.25-epia2 http://www.epiawiki.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=EpiaPatchHowto and installing it at present. This is the easy part. Enabling the CLE266 support and XvMC in X is the tricky part.

I know this is an old thread but I'm wondering if there's any updates. Will R5 be supporting any MPEG-2 hardware decoders other then the PVR-350? The 350 is great, but not cost effective to put in a frontend only box.

Ideal situation (for me) would be several PVR-250 cards in the backend and one TV-Out MPEG-2 hardware decoder in each frontend.

Am I just dreaming?

well the mpeg2 acceleration on nvidia has been supported for a LONG time (although quite buggy till recently or so some people say) and the via 266 has been supported in the last two versions, though the cn400 support is not included in knoppmyth yet. (so not hd on epia just yet)

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Xsecrets

How about MediaMVP? That's a REAL cheap frontend with a hardware decoder. Anybody that's used it care to comment on the "limitations" as opposed to a real frontend?

The work/reward of trying to support the MVP isn't worth it.

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I would respectfully disagree with cesman.

I have a MediaMVP and it's a very cheap, very small, absolutely quiet solution. If you can't afford to have a computer for each TV, or there's space or noise limitations that keep you from using even a SFF computer, this is a nice solution. Heck, it's way smaller than even an Xbox front end.

It's definitely NOT a full-featured front-end, though... it's pretty much limited to playing back what you've recorded on your backend. No recording scheduling, no LiveTV, no plug-ins, no video filtering. Playback is a little flaky too: make sure and commercial-skip forward and back, and not fast forward, as you'll lose audio sync.

And with respect to the topic at hand, it does have a MPEG-2 decoder and preserves field playback, so recordings look correct without having to deinterlace.

As for the work involved, if I can do it, anyone can do it:

http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... LinuxHOWTO

I meant from the standpoint of trying to support it with KnoppMyth. I suppose all the pieces are there, but I'm not going to script anything of it (but don't let that stop anyone from doing so and submitting it...)... To me, a frontend would be capable of playing thing on the backend not but MPEG1 and 2. Xvid anyone?

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Ok, so if I want a full-featured frontend on a SFF computer, it either has to have a hardware decoder or enough processor to software decode.

Trying to come up with an inexpensive (full-featured) fontend, here are my questions:

1.) (same as original post) Are there any hardware decoder cards cheaper then the PVR-350 that are supported in knoppmyth and are not "quite buggy"?

2.) What is the minimum processor needed for a frontend only machine to do software decoding?

3.) Is it possible to use a PVR-350 on the backend to hardware decode before streaming the video to the frontend? (I doubt it, but never hurts to ask, right?)

I might still go with the MediaMVP if they fix the fast forward bug since I really only watch MPEG-2 stuff recorded with a 250/350. That project (mvpmc.sourceforge.net) is still undergoing pretty active development, right?

1) this is a little difficult to answer as the pvr350 is the only full hardware mpeg2 decoder supported in linux period, though the motion compensation hardware support for the epia with the 266 is supposed to be pretty good. and the epia would be my suggestion for a small quiet frontend, more expensive than the mvp, but it can be a full featured front end.

2) also hard to answer will depend on how the stream is recorded. the reports I've heard are the epia 1G runs around 40% cpu when using xvmc and decoding mpeg2 from a pvrx50 card. (haven't tried myself this is just word of mouth) Now if you are going to go high def the epia's with the 266 will not handle it, though there are reports of the cn400 based epia boards actually being able to decode hd, however the cn400 is not yet supported in knoppmyth. As for the origional question it varies too greatly to answer with any precision, but there are some guidelines in the FAQ.

3)NO, well unless you want to run a really long svideo cable and your frontend is just there to look pretty.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Last build was 7/14/05 so not too bad.

Hmmm, now that you mention it, you COULD run svideo over cat5, then use an ir extender for the remote.....

I'm not recommending these particular products, they're just examples:
SVideo over CAT5:
http://www.smarthome.com/7805S.html
IR Extender:
http://www.smarthome.com/8210.html

I wonder what the quality would be like? This would obviously only work for one TV, but it's one less frontend PC you'd have to put together.


The other idea I'm considering is putting a PVR-350 in the frontend, but using it as a slave backend as well so as not to waste the hardware encoder. Can a slave backend save it's recordings to the massive hard drives in the master backend? Sounds complicated....then again, doesn't complicated=fun!?!?!