I've read that when using XvMC you can't do Picture-in-Picture and, for me, that's not a major limitation. However, today I also read that you can't do pause and that's a killer.

I was hoping to build a small box based on the Via Eden processor so I'll need every ounce of help from the hardware, so my question is are there any other limitations when using XvMC?

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Geoff

I think XvMC requires a decent Nvidia card. Only some cards are supported, and you are tied to a closed-source driver from Nvidia.

Unless you are doing HD, you probably don't need XvMC... Looking at the specs on some via Eden systems at around 1.2 GHz, not sure if that will do SD decoding very well either...

The Via boards can use the OpenChrome driver which support XvMC, well at least that's what I've been led to believe.



I'm trying to go for an fanless box and as such I'm considering the VIA EPIA ML 8000 which runs at 800MHz. In my area of the UK the analogue signal is being dropped in about two years' time so I'm going for a digital only box. This means that there'll be no need to do any encoding and I'm not even considering HD for this box.

The only grunt work this box will have to do is decoding when watching so I am considering a backup plan if it struggles to do this and record at the same time (it's a frontend/backend). The backup plan so far is to use XvMC.

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Geoff

As far as I'm aware, the only isssue w/ XvMC has been grayscale display for OSD.

I use XvMC and the only 3 problems I have is:

Greyscale OSD
No PIP
No Close Captioning

Pause works fine. I do use SD and still require XvMC. I use BOB2 deinterlacing and without XvMC turned on, my frontend runs @ 80% CPU, with it on, it runs at about 9%. Well worth the compromise.

--Theo

_________________
System Specs:
Intel P4 3.2Ghz; Intel mobo; nVid 7600gs AGP (512MB); SoundBlaster Audigy2 Sound; R5.5; PVR-500; HD Homerun; Vizio 42" LCD

Those I can live with


Great!



That's quite a saving in CPU time, I agree, it's well worth the compromise IMHO.

Thank-you.

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Geoff

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/XvMC#Caveats

I can confirm that trying to adjust edit points with XvMC on is problematic.

Using Xvmc on my previous install, pause worked fine, but indeed PIP was a problem. It probably isn't capable of doing to HD streams at a time.