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PostPosted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 3:38 pm 
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I'm a total newbie at this but want to try and build a unit to record OTA channels.

I'm on a very limited budget due to the wifes ever increasing medical bills and my insurance company covering less and less.

This is what I'm thing of using KnoppMyth and for the system and am wondering if this will work:

What I have is a 250 GB HD, and a DVD RW

HP Compaq D530 Small Form Factor Desktop, Pentium 4 2.8 GHz, 1 GB DDR RAM and a HD-5500 tuner card.

What this board has is

# One (1) AGP slot
# Two (2) PCI slots on a riser card
# Four (4) 184-pin DIMM sockets

I'm open to suggestions ... thanks


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 4:14 pm 
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Location: Virginia, USA
One big factor you haven't mentioned: what kind of display do you want to watch your recordings on?

If you just want to watch your recordings on your computer's monitor, you might be OK (depending on the resolution of that monitor and the performance of your on-board video).

But usually on-board video doesn't perform all that well, particularly for HD recordings, and particularly if you can tell when interlacing isn't working properly. And even moreso if you are connecting your system to a HDTV.

So you will likely have to end up getting an nVidia video card.

Before that, though, you should try to start your system up with the KnoppMyth or LinHES CD, just to see if your Compaq will even work with it.


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 8:08 pm 
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ceenvee703 wrote:
One big factor you haven't mentioned: what kind of display do you want to watch your recordings on?

Said I was an idiot ... it is a 55" Vizio 1080p HDTV.
Quote:
But usually on-board video doesn't perform all that well, particularly for HD recordings, and particularly if you can tell when interlacing isn't working properly. And even moreso if you are connecting your system to a HDTV. So you will likely have to end up getting an nVidia video card.

OK ... didn't even stop to think about this. Not sure what specifics I need for a video card.

Is there a faq or file telling me the mins I need to look for?

Thanks for responding



Before that, though, you should try to start your system up with the KnoppMyth or LinHES CD, just to see if your Compaq will even work with it.[/quote]


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PostPosted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:26 am 
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Location: Virginia, USA
I would check out this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU

and then get an Nvidia 8400GS or better given that list.

VDPAU is basically hardware-accelerated playback of video. You can use very little CPU to play back HD video if you use VDPAU.

LinHES will let you set up VDPAU with a little work, since MythTV 0.21 doesn't support it directly. You can search around here or on the Wiki for details on how to do it, and you will probably need to do it with that CPU.

MythTV 0.22 will support VDPAU directly but LinHES won't implement 0.22 for a while.

OK, now the bad news. :(

I don't think there are any 8000-level Nvidia cards made for AGP. I went to Newegg.com and looked and the max I saw was 7000-level AGP cards.

You can get an 8400GS in PCI format, but then you've got that plus the 5500 in both of your PCI slots, and given that it's a small form factor computer and the slots are on a riser card, you'll really have to make sure cards will fit.

So I think the best and cheapest path forward for you right now is first to download the KnoppMyth or LinHES ISO file, burn a disc, and then pick the "run as frontend" option. This will boot from the CD and get you all the way to the MythTV main screen, even though you will have to pretend you have a backend machine (where all recordings are stored) and it won't find it.

You're basically confirming that the computer can even start up with the software setup. If it can't, you know it's time to get a different box to run things. If it can, you can decide what comes next.

Hope this makes sense.


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PostPosted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:14 pm 
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Location: Ottawa, Canada
I'm pretty sure the HD-5500 generates MPEG format for ATSC and thus VDPAU would not be strictly necessary for this set up. The P4 he has will decode just fine and if he gets a quiet (no fan) 7000 series card (e.g. 7600) for AGP then this can use the onboard decoder too.

The only issue will be any H.264 content which would require a better processor OR VDPAU.

The nice part about the 7000 series cards now is you can get them cheap second hand.

C


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:59 am 
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Location: Virginia, USA
Correct, the HD-5500 captures MPEG2 over-the-air ATSC broadcasts.

I can never remember what amount of CPU is needed to play back MPEG2 recordings all on its own without any help from the video card: too many variables, Intel vs AMD, single-core vs. dual-core, blah blah blah.

Certainly the easiest path forward is to put the HD-5500 in the P4 2.8, use on-board video and see if it'll play back. If so, great. If not, yeah, maybe a 7000-series AGP card and XvMC is a better solution than an 8000-series card.


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 9:23 am 
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The D530 was available configured both with onboard graphics only AND with a separate video card.

The onboard video is the Intel 865G chipset. Totally inadequate for video playback.

The separate video card could be configured with up to a GeForce 4 MMX440. I'm not as certain about this video card, but I'm guessing it won't be up to snuff.

The motherboard only has an AGP connector on it -- no PCI express. On Newegg the best card you can get in AGP is a 7300GT or a 7600GS -- neither of which are supported by VDPAU.

Basically, Ceenvee703 is exactly right, rhossack. Your chances of making this machine viable are pretty limited -- make sure to test as much as you can before you pour money into this machine.

That being said, it's pretty easy these days to build a Myth box capable of HD these days and keep it between the $300 and $400 marks. A friend of mine just specced out a box using a low power AMD chip for mid $300s. I haven't experimented with it yet, but my understanding from reviews is that the Atom-ION package might be just as capable and even less expensive. So don't burn too much money on the old machine before deciding to upgrade.

B


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 9:30 pm 
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Location: Arlington, MA
Using XvMC an AGP card with a fast FX5200 or better will playback full 1080i/p HD at quite reasonable CPU use %. VDPAU is better and will reduce the CPU usage even more, but it's not necessary.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 8:54 pm 
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I thank you for your input.

I set this up and the wife nixed it pretty quick.

Too Noisy, too ugly and doesn't like it in the living room.

She said isn't there something else smaller?

So, I'm looking at the ASRock NetTop ION 330 as this appears to meet with her specifications.


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