Mailing List Archive

Can't speak for others, but my M10000 + PVR250 can't manage
unfortunately :-/
It stutters continuously. Only when I bring down the quality to
unwatchable propertions does it display smoothly.

But the effect is slight, so I hope the improved drivers or support for
the VIA mpeg decoder will solve the problem in the near future.

-Tako

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Bowen
> Sent: dinsdag 5 augustus 2003 7:35
> To: mythtv-users@snowman.net
> Subject: [mythtv-users] epia vs PVR-350 hardware decoding
>
>
> Hello all,
> For awhile I've been looking into building a small form
> factor/quiet myth box, which, considering the low CPU power
> of these kinds of systems, will probably require hardware
> encoding/decoding... the PVR-250 support looks like it solved
> the encoding part, but from what I've been able to discern
> from reading the list, there's no support yet for hardware
> decoding - both the PVR-350 and the EPIA's mpeg2 decoder are
> currently unsupported. So my question is, does anyone who has
> been following the development of the necessary drivers have
> a rough idea of when it might be reasonable to expect they
> might be ready and myth-supported? Anytime soon, or far off
> in the future?
>
> Second related question: assuming neither is going to be
> supported in the near future, how much processing power is
> needed to run myth smoothly, assuming hardware encoding?
> Would one of the new EPIA boxes with a PVR-250 cut it with
> the decoding being done in software?
>
> Any thought appreciated,
>
> Kevin Bowen
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

On Tuesday 05 August 2003 09:48 am, Tako Schotanus wrote:
> Can't speak for others, but my M10000 + PVR250 can't manage
> unfortunately :-/
> It stutters continuously. Only when I bring down the quality to
> unwatchable propertions does it display smoothly.
>
> But the effect is slight, so I hope the improved drivers or support for
> the VIA mpeg decoder will solve the problem in the near future.

Again, you don't have your machine set up properly.

Isaac
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

Again? I've not seen any message before telling me that I've got my
system setup wrongly.

But please enlighten me! If you know which keywords I can search the
mailing list for to find what I've done wrong I would be "much
grateful"!

I've fiddled around a LOT with all kinds of test_ioctl settings without
any luck.

So any pointers about how to fix my setup would be most welcome so that
in the future I can say that the M10000 + pvr250 combo works perfectly.
:-)

-Tako

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Isaac Richards
> Sent: dinsdag 5 augustus 2003 17:45
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] epia vs PVR-350 hardware decoding
>
>
> On Tuesday 05 August 2003 09:48 am, Tako Schotanus wrote:
> > Can't speak for others, but my M10000 + PVR250 can't manage
> > unfortunately :-/
> > It stutters continuously. Only when I bring down the quality to
> > unwatchable propertions does it display smoothly.
> >
> > But the effect is slight, so I hope the improved drivers or
> support for
> > the VIA mpeg decoder will solve the problem in the near future.
>
> Again, you don't have your machine set up properly.
>
> Isaac
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

On Tuesday 05 August 2003 12:18 pm, Tako Schotanus wrote:
> Again? I've not seen any message before telling me that I've got my
> system setup wrongly.

You're always complaining that it doesn't play well on your system. Works
fine here on identical hardware (~50% total cpu during playback of 480x480
mpeg2 at 4.5/6 mbps), and on other people's machines. If it's using 100% cpu
for playback, you _have_ to have a configuration issue on your machine.

Isaac
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

Tsk tsk, Isaac, I wasn't complaining. In fact how many people send
patches (albeit very minor ones ;-) for systems that they can't even use
properly?

I _do_ tell people what _my_ experience is. And it would be very
possible that if I have problems with it that other might as well. It
might also be that after months of fiddling, reading and writing mailing
list posts and after _repeated_ questions for details about using the
M10000 with PVR250 without getting anything that might be of much help I
think others might find them equally stumped.

Sure it _should_ work (which I can now say 100% sure because you say
that such a system works perfectly for you) but in the end people might
find it just as difficult as I do. Me "complaining" can only help in the
way that others can now point out that their M10000+PVR250 works
perfectly and offer help in setting things ups. So far no luck. Keeping
my mouth shut serves nobody in this case.

But let's get down to business: my system doesn't have a 100% cpu load
during display, that was months ago when still not using the VIA X
driver. With the via driver it's about 60% if I remember correctly, but
I can check again tonight when I get home.

Using 4.5/6 mbps as well and the picture looks just great. What happens
is that on playback the sounds starts to stutter, the more changes are
happening on screen the more it stutters (which is maybe suggests a bus
or memory speed/overload problem? not suree, don't know enough about
hardware limits and such). dmesg doesn't show any complaints from any of
the system's modules. (ivtv will show "not enough free buffers" errors
at times, but never when I'm watching LiveTV or a recording that
stutters).

This is the script I run before I start MythTV.

CMD=test_ioctl
echo "### Enabling PAL"
$CMD -u 0xff # 0xff = PAL, 0x3000 = NTSC
echo "### Enabling tuner"
$CMD -p 4 # 4 = tuner, 0 = composite video
echo "### Setting resolution to 720x576"
$CMD -f width=720,height=576 # Full PAL res = 720x576, NTSC = 720x480
echo "### Setting framerates"
$CMD -c framespergop=12,framerate=1 # fr 1 = 25/sec
echo "### Setting bitrates"
$CMD -c bitrate=4500000,bitrate_peak=6000000

I know that full PAL resolution is maybe a bit much. I'll look at it
again tonight to see what the difference in performance is again (did
most of the tests already some time ago and can't remember all the
details) but I do know that I didn't look at it further because I could
hardly read the subtitles anymore. Going to any other vertical
resolution but 576 just wasn't watchable, sometimes everything jumped
around but in any case subtitles and other on-screen texts were just
unreadable.

So does anybody have any ideas?

Cheers,
-Tako


> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Isaac Richards
> Sent: dinsdag 5 augustus 2003 18:31
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] epia vs PVR-350 hardware decoding
>
>
> On Tuesday 05 August 2003 12:18 pm, Tako Schotanus wrote:
> > Again? I've not seen any message before telling me that I've got my
> > system setup wrongly.
>
> You're always complaining that it doesn't play well on your
> system. Works
> fine here on identical hardware (~50% total cpu during
> playback of 480x480
> mpeg2 at 4.5/6 mbps), and on other people's machines. If
> it's using 100% cpu
> for playback, you _have_ to have a configuration issue on
> your machine.
>
> Isaac
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

will probably require hardware encoding/decoding... the PVR-250 support
>looks like it solved the encoding part, but from what I've been able to
>discern from reading the list, there's no support yet for hardware
>decoding - both the PVR-350 and the EPIA's mpeg2 decoder are currently
>unsupported. So my question is, does anyone who has been following the
>development of the necessary drivers have a rough idea of when it might
>be reasonable to expect they might be ready and myth-supported? Anytime
>soon, or far off in the future?

what about dxr2/dxr3? Seems like those could be supported as well, though
having seperate cards doesn't seem to do much good in a small form-factor
device.

>Second related question: assuming neither is going to be supported in
>the near future, how much processing power is needed to run myth
>smoothly, assuming hardware encoding? Would one of the new EPIA boxes
>with a PVR-250 cut it with the decoding being done in software?

Playing DVD's (super-high-quality) with a hardware decoder works on a
300mhz processor. (Just for the decoding part). With hardware
encoding/decoding, it seems like you should be ok with 600mhz (maybe even
400mhz).

--
Brian Hayward

no, the issue is that both hardare decoders AREN'T currently supported, whereas the pvr-250 hardware encoder is.

-----Original Message-----
From: hayward@slothmud.org [mailto:hayward@slothmud.org]
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 11:48 AM
To: mythtv-users@snowman.net
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] epia vs PVR-350 hardware decoding


will probably require hardware encoding/decoding... the PVR-250 support
>looks like it solved the encoding part, but from what I've been able to
>discern from reading the list, there's no support yet for hardware
>decoding - both the PVR-350 and the EPIA's mpeg2 decoder are currently
>unsupported. So my question is, does anyone who has been following the
>development of the necessary drivers have a rough idea of when it might
>be reasonable to expect they might be ready and myth-supported? Anytime
>soon, or far off in the future?

what about dxr2/dxr3? Seems like those could be supported as well, though
having seperate cards doesn't seem to do much good in a small form-factor
device.

>Second related question: assuming neither is going to be supported in
>the near future, how much processing power is needed to run myth
>smoothly, assuming hardware encoding? Would one of the new EPIA boxes
>with a PVR-250 cut it with the decoding being done in software?

Playing DVD's (super-high-quality) with a hardware decoder works on a
300mhz processor. (Just for the decoding part). With hardware
encoding/decoding, it seems like you should be ok with 600mhz (maybe even
400mhz).

--
Brian Hayward


_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

For you (or any of the others who have a working setup with this hardware), how responsive is the OSD with the amount of CPU left during playback?

-----Original Message-----
From: Isaac Richards [mailto:ijr@po.cwru.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 9:31 AM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] epia vs PVR-350 hardware decoding


On Tuesday 05 August 2003 12:18 pm, Tako Schotanus wrote:
> Again? I've not seen any message before telling me that I've got my
> system setup wrongly.

You're always complaining that it doesn't play well on your system. Works
fine here on identical hardware (~50% total cpu during playback of 480x480
mpeg2 at 4.5/6 mbps), and on other people's machines. If it's using 100% cpu
for playback, you _have_ to have a configuration issue on your machine.

Isaac
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

Took a look at CPU usage and as I thought my mythfrontend used about 60%
so I thought any stuttering I had could not be due to excessive CPU
load. But of course I had forgotten to take a good look at the rest. At
720x576 and with a PVR250 mythbackend only takes up 3-5% but X takes
whatever is left and so the total load was 100% continuous :-/

Again fiddled around with lowering the resolution and such although my
experience was that lowering the resolution would really bring down the
quality of the picture. Well I was right about that, but it seems that
you really have to try ALL possible resolutions because some of them
give very good picture while others are lousy.

The last time I tried lowering the resolution I did it with big steps
just to find the point where performance would be good and do any
finetuning later. But the quality being as bad as it was I never did any
finetuning. Now I found that about 1/3 of the horizontal resolution just
make the picture jump all over the place while the rest are rock solid.

I still haven't found any good vertical resolutions besides 576 because
most of them are more or less jittery/jumpy (of course with jitter
reduction enabled) or have visible staircasing in diagonal lines.

Now running at 464x576 and have only a _very_ occasional stutter. CPU
load is at 80-90% continuous (50-60% for frontend, 25% X, 2-5% backend).
Turning on the OSD will immediately cause stuttering, but that's to be
expected of course when there is so little CPU left.

I'll see if I can free up the cpu a little more to get the OSD to work
smoothly by lowering the bitrates a bit (using 4.5/6 Mbps now). We'll
see. Any other ideas I could try?

Cheers,
-Tako


> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Isaac Richards
> Sent: dinsdag 5 augustus 2003 18:31
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] epia vs PVR-350 hardware decoding
>
>
> On Tuesday 05 August 2003 12:18 pm, Tako Schotanus wrote:
> > Again? I've not seen any message before telling me that I've got my
> > system setup wrongly.
>
> You're always complaining that it doesn't play well on your
> system. Works
> fine here on identical hardware (~50% total cpu during
> playback of 480x480
> mpeg2 at 4.5/6 mbps), and on other people's machines. If
> it's using 100% cpu
> for playback, you _have_ to have a configuration issue on
> your machine.
>
> Isaac
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>