MythTV on nVidia ION platform

[Jarod Wilson]

Tom Metro wrote:
 > Jarod Wilson wrote:
>> I should actually have one of the Zotac ION mini-itx motherboards
>> showing up at my house on Monday...
>
> I look forward to hearing how that works out for you.

There are a few rough spots, but overall, its freakin' *AMAZING*. The 
GPU-based VDPAU decoding still isn't flawless, it doesn't handle 
corrupted video streams particularly well (such as an HDTV recording 
where the signal might have briefly dropped out), doesn't handle some of 
the h.264 material I've got properly (swaths of incorrectly decoded 
frames of video, making things unwatchable), and there's an occasional 
noticeable stall here and there, but...

Generally speaking, clean HDTV recordings and the bulk of h.264 1080p 
material plays back *flawlessly*, with the lowly atom (N330, dual-core 
x86_64 1.6GHz, in this case) cpu never going over 20% busy on one core. 
Most of the time, the cpu is 100% idle on one core, 90% on the other.

Note that this means the single-core 32-bit atom ought to be just as 
playback-capable. (I wasn't sure, and figured I might as well get 64-bit 
and dual-core for the $30 or $40 more it cost).

Note also that purchasing an nVidia GeForce 8 or 9 series will get you 
the same sort of GPU-based VDPAU decoding offload. I also picked up a 
GeForce 9600GT card I plan to play with VDPAU on sometime soon. Note 
that its preferable to get an 8600gt or better in the 8 series, and a 
9500gt or better in the 9 series, as the lower designation cards don't 
have enough stream processors (simultaneous data stream handling units) 
to do both decode and the advanced 2x hardware deinterlacer, which is 
supposed to be far and away the best one, if you need a deinterlacer (I 
don't, so the 9400-class GPU in the ION is actually enough for me).

Of course, VDPAU is not officially supported until 0.22 is out, but 
MythTV svn trunk is pretty damned stable for me, and there also exist 
0.21-based packages for a few distros out there w/an unauthorized VDPAU 
backport that supposedly works well enough for a lot of people.

I'm actually considering, just for giggles, picking up a PCI GeForce 94 
or 9500, to see if I can coax a lowly p3/933 compaq deskpro en I have 
kicking around to play back HDTV video smoothly... :)

So a relatively low-power, full-fledged MythTV frontend, capable of 
playing back both mpeg2 and h.264 HDTV-resolution material can now be 
put together for between say $250 and $400, depending on what 
functionality you want in it (optical drive? wifi? local storage?). 
Still more than one of the Networked Media Tank devices (but not by 
much), and reports suggest the decoding ability of the NMTs is presently 
still superior (files that choke VDPAU play fine on an NMT), but I gotta 
say that the ION is pretty damned impressive.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org