mythtv and digital tv

[Jarod Wilson]

On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 21:17 -0400, Ben Scott wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 6:36 PM, Frank DiPrete <fdiprete at comcast.net> wrote:
> > I like the HDHomeRun card ...
> 
>   Just to make sure it's clear, the HDHomeRun isn't a card, it's an
> external box (about the size of a cigar box).  It uses a wall-wart
> type power supply transformer.
> 
> > If the card had hardware encoding it would be perfect.
> 
>   Encoding or decoding?
> 
>   For digital broadcast -- be it cable or ATSC OTA -- the stream is
> already encoded and compressed as part of the transmission process.
> There's no need for an encoder.
> 
>   The HDHomeRun is digital only; it doesn't even have an NTSC tuner.
> So, to the best of understanding, the HDHomeRun has no use for a
> hardware encoder.  The HD-5500 does have an NTSC tuner; I don't know
> if it has a hardware encoder or not.

It does not. Its only much more recently that cards with both digital
and analog support also included a hardware encoder for the analog side.
The only one I know for sure actually works under linux is the Hauppauge
WinTV HVR-1600 though.

>   For decoding, I believe you'd still be able to use the "small quiet
> diskless box frontend".  The one thing I'm not sure about is: I expect
> not all hardware decoders are created equal.  It may be the decoder in
> your front-end box can't handle this new-fangeled high-def stuff.

Definitely a concern. It takes a heck of a lot more for decoding HDTV
than SDTV. Although not nearly so much as it used to. My frontend is a
mere core duo 1.66 with intel gma950 graphics, and it handles the job
just fine. "Small quiet diskless" often implies a Via processor
though... Which may or may not be enough, depending on the video
chipset, the openchrome driver, and the options mythtv was built with...


-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com