Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 19:50 -0800, R wrote: (On the backend, I plan to have multiple tuner cards, 300GB+ SATA hard disks, 1.5GB RAM, etc.) I need a frontend to mainly view Live TV and recorded shows. What would you recommend as the minimum hardware requirements for a frontend? The mythfrontend itself doesn't appear to be very resource hungry. That is, not counting plugins and using a hardware MPEG decoder such as on the PVR-350 TV-card. I have been playing around with a GCT Allwell N1030 system. This is basically a set top box with a Geode 233 MHz (slot 7) processor and 64 MB of memory. The trump-card is a PVR-350 from which only the tv-out (MPEG 2 decoder) is used. On a standard Fedora Core 4 environment, the MythTV frontend was installed and configured to use the tv-out. The result was a working and stable system. Live TV and recorded shows playback is working fine. There is some minor stuttering while the OSD fades out and browsing the menu's is a little bit slow. But it is a working usable system. While this system does not exactly answer your question (it is a quite minimal system, but I wouldn't recommend it, compiling mythtv took 2 days), it does show that for just viewing television (not HDTV) the tv-out decoding is the main bottleneck. For those interested in the attempts to get MythTV working with the N1030 set top box can find a discussion here: http://www.familiebruggeman.nl/~mythtv/smartbox.html Best regards, Wouter Bruggeman ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
Hi Wouter, Very interesting project. I'm interested in something 'alike'. There are netdvdplayers on the market with a sigma-designs EM8620L computer on a chip, which is able to do the 'same' as the Hauppauge 350 card. It also has a 166Mhz CPU with 64MB RAM, a networkadapter and a IDE interface, with SCART and DVI out, and is HD capable 720 and 1080i. 'Only' problem is how to get a framebuffer-like configuration as with the Hauppauge 350, after getting IN to the system. Henk Schoneveld ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
On Wednesday 04 January 2006 02:14, Ian Forde wrote:
On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 01:36 -0500, Steve Adeff wrote:
your motherboard should have the Realtek ALC850 which is the same as my
MSI board and works fine when using the intel ac97 ALSA drivers:
Yep - definitely the ALC850. And the intel ac97 drivers load up.
Incidentally, the vendor is DFI, not AFI. Typo on my part...
Yea, I figured, unless your motherboard was made by an semi-obscure punk
band...
snd_intel8x0 33664 0
snd_ac97_codec105028 1 snd_intel8x0
snd_ac97_bus3712 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm_oss52896 0
snd_mixer_oss 17536 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm89480 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 23432 1 snd_pcm
snd52704 6
snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
I should point out, this is for both the ALC850 on the K8n and the ALC655
on my KN1.
Also, some boards have a BIOS setting where you can force the audio
chipset into their native mode or AC97 mode. I haven't come across this
with the Realtek chips, but it could still be out there on another
motherboard. OR If you see such a thing in your BIOS and your having
trouble with your sound, set it to AC97 mode an ALSA should detect it as
an AC97 audio chip and load the appropriate intel drivers.
Mine only has the BIOS setting: AC97 Audio which can be set to Auto
or Disabled. So no native mode... Alsa had no trouble loading the
drivers, and PCM audio worked just fine. It's just the AC3 audio that
doesn't work. If yours is working fine, can you post the 'lspci -v'
output and send me your asound.state and .asoundrc files?
BIOS: same here.
.asoundrc for ALC850 is attached.
--
Steve
# Override the default output used by ALSA.
# If you do not override the default, your default
# device is identical to the (unmixed) analog device
# shown below. If you prefer mixed and/or digital
# output, uncomment the appropriate four lines below
# (only one slave.pcm line).
pcm.!default {
type plug
## Uncomment the following to use mixed analog by default
# slave.pcm dmix-analog
## Uncomment the following to use unmixed digital by default
slave.pcm digital
# slave.pcm digital-hw
## Uncomment the following to use mixed digital by default
# slave.pcm dmix-digital
}
# Alias for analog output on the nForce2 (hw:0,0)
# - This is identical to the device named default--which
# always exists and refers to hw:0,0 (unless overridden)
# - Therefore, we can specify hw:0,0, default, or analog
# to access analog output on the nForce2
pcm.analog {
type plug
slave.pcm analog-hw
}
# Control device (mixer, etc.) for the nForce2 card
ctl.analog {
type hw
card 0
}
# Alias for (rate-converted) mixed analog output on the
# nForce2 (hw:0,0)
# - This will accept audio input--regardless of rate--and
# convert to the rate required for the dmix plugin
# (in this case 48000Hz)
pcm.mixed-analog {
type plug
slave.pcm dmix-analog
}
# Control device (mixer, etc.) for the nForce2 card
ctl.mixed-analog {
type hw
card 0
}
# Alias for (rate-converted) digital (S/PDIF) output on the
# nForce2 (hw:0,2)
# - This will accept audio input--regardless of rate--and
# convert to the rate required for the S/PDIF hardware
# (in this case 48000Hz)
pcm.digital {
type plug
slave.pcm digital-hw
}
# Control device (mixer, etc.) for the nForce2 card
ctl.digital {
type hw
card 0
}
# Alias for mixed (rate-converted) digital (S/PDIF) output on the
# nForce2 (hw:0,2)
# - This will accept audio input--regardless of rate--and
# convert to the rate required for the S/PDIF hardware
# (in this case 48000Hz)
pcm.mixed-digital {
type plug
slave.pcm dmix-digital
}
# Control device (mixer, etc.) for the nForce2 card
ctl.mixed-digital {
type hw
card 0
}
# The following devices are not useful by themselves. They
# require specific rates, channels, and formats. Therefore,
# you probably do not want to use them directly. Instead use
# of of the devices defined above.
# Alias for analog output on the nForce2 (hw:0,0)
# Do not use this directly--it requires specific rate,
# channels, and format
pcm.analog-hw {
type hw
card 0
# The default value for device is 0, so no need to specify
}
# Control device (mixer, etc.) for the nForce2 card
ctl.analog-hw {
type hw
card 0
}
# Alias for digital (S/PDIF) output on the nForce2 (hw:0,2)
# Do not use this directly--it requires specific rate,
# channels, and format
pcm.digital-hw {
type hw
card 0
device 2
}
# Control device (mixer, etc.) for the nForce2 card
ctl.digital-hw {
type hw
card 0
}
# Direct software mixing plugin for analog output on
# the nForce2 (hw:0,0)
# Do not use this directly--it requires specific rate,
# channels, and format
pcm.dmix-analog {
type dmix
ipc_key
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
Another choice is an AMD processor on an NVIDIA chipset basedmotherboard. I have been playing with an AMD Athlon64 3200 on an ASUS A8N-VM CSM. Even without the NVIDIA XvMC support (it is broken in thedrivers for the motherboard chipset), it has not trouble with SD. I should hope not! A 500Mhz PIII should do DVD res. MPEG-2. 256MB of RAM helps things along, but you can get by with 128. If you need to do MPEG-4, something around 900Mhz is probably necesary. ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
RE: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
I need a frontend to mainly view Live TV and recorded shows. What would you recommend as the minimum hardware requirements for a frontend? I have a modded xbox running debian as a frontend. Does pretty much everything SD, I understand it does hd but cannot verify the fact. Total cost with hot-swap software hack = $70usd If you can find an old one used its even better as they are easier to hack than the new ones like mine. ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
On Tuesday 03 January 2006 21:50, William wrote: I need a frontend to mainly view Live TV and recorded shows. What would you recommend as the minimum hardware requirements for a frontend? I have a modded xbox running debian as a frontend. Does pretty much everything SD, I understand it does hd but cannot verify the fact. Total cost with hot-swap software hack = $70usd If you can find an old one used its even better as they are easier to hack than the new ones like mine. XBOX can't do HD, not enough CPU power. It can however handle outputting SD material (up to 960x540p) to an HDTV. Does make a great cheap SD frontend though! -- Steve ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
On 1/2/06, R [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (On the backend, I plan to have multiple tuner cards, 300GB+ SATA hard disks, 1.5GB RAM, etc.) I need a frontend to mainly view Live TV and recorded shows. What would you recommend as the minimum hardware requirements for a frontend? ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users I agree that if you are limiting yourself to live tv and recordings, then cle266 is the way to go. There are some bargain small form factor boards out there with c3 800MHz and cle266 that are a lot cheaper than the Epias. The only drawback is that none of them seem to have tv-out. I recently set up a dedicated front end on a PC Chips M789CG with an LCD monitor as display and it works perfectly. The only place it chokes is in the program browser - the miniature live tv window stutters a bit when browsing. ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 21:01 -0500, Chris Ribe wrote: Another choice is an AMD processor on an NVIDIA chipset based motherboard. I have been playing with an AMD Athlon64 3200 on an ASUS A8N-VM CSM. Even without the NVIDIA XvMC support (it is broken in the drivers for the motherboard chipset), it has not trouble with SD. I should hope not! A 500Mhz PIII should do DVD res. MPEG-2. 256MB of RAM helps things along, but you can get by with 128. If you need to do MPEG-4, something around 900Mhz is probably necesary. I'd beware of NVidia chipset motherboards. NForce3 and NForce4 audio capabilities aren't completely supported in Alsa. Especially if you're thinking about using the SPDIF to do AC3... Been bitten by this one too. ;) -I ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
On Wednesday 04 January 2006 00:34, Ian Forde wrote: On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 21:01 -0500, Chris Ribe wrote: Another choice is an AMD processor on an NVIDIA chipset based motherboard. I have been playing with an AMD Athlon64 3200 on an ASUS A8N-VM CSM. Even without the NVIDIA XvMC support (it is broken in the drivers for the motherboard chipset), it has not trouble with SD. I should hope not! A 500Mhz PIII should do DVD res. MPEG-2. 256MB of RAM helps things along, but you can get by with 128. If you need to do MPEG-4, something around 900Mhz is probably necesary. I'd beware of NVidia chipset motherboards. NForce3 and NForce4 audio capabilities aren't completely supported in Alsa. Especially if you're thinking about using the SPDIF to do AC3... Been bitten by this one too. ;) -I been working fine for me, both an nForce3 and nForce4 motherboards. -- Steve ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
Ian Forde wrote: On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 21:01 -0500, Chris Ribe wrote: Another choice is an AMD processor on an NVIDIA chipset based motherboard. I have been playing with an AMD Athlon64 3200 on an ASUS A8N-VM CSM. Even without the NVIDIA XvMC support (it is broken in the drivers for the motherboard chipset), it has not trouble with SD. I should hope not! A 500Mhz PIII should do DVD res. MPEG-2. 256MB of RAM helps things along, but you can get by with 128. If you need to do MPEG-4, something around 900Mhz is probably necesary. I'd beware of NVidia chipset motherboards. NForce3 and NForce4 audio capabilities aren't completely supported in Alsa. Especially if you're thinking about using the SPDIF to do AC3... Been bitten by this one too. ;) You are correct. I should have mentioned that. That is one of the advantages of the ASUS A8N-VM CSM board. While it has onboard audio, the on board audio is not the audio provided by the NVIDIA chipset. ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 00:43 -0500, Steve Adeff wrote: On Wednesday 04 January 2006 00:34, Ian Forde wrote: I'd beware of NVidia chipset motherboards. NForce3 and NForce4 audio capabilities aren't completely supported in Alsa. Especially if you're thinking about using the SPDIF to do AC3... been working fine for me, both an nForce3 and nForce4 motherboards. That's weird... what motherboard and version of Alsa are you using? Mine's an AFI LanParty UT nF3 250Gb. I experienced the blue light goes on on receiver but I get no AC3 sound as listed in Alsa tickets 1083 and 1094... -I ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
Paul Bender wrote: Ian Forde wrote: On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 21:01 -0500, Chris Ribe wrote: Another choice is an AMD processor on an NVIDIA chipset based motherboard. I have been playing with an AMD Athlon64 3200 on an ASUSA8N-VM CSM. Even without the NVIDIA XvMC support (it is broken in the drivers for the motherboard chipset), it has not trouble with SD. I should hope not! A 500Mhz PIII should do DVD res. MPEG-2. 256MB of RAM helps things along, but you can get by with 128. If you need to do MPEG-4, something around 900Mhz is probably necesary. I'd beware of NVidia chipset motherboards. NForce3 and NForce4 audio capabilities aren't completely supported in Alsa. Especially if you're thinking about using the SPDIF to do AC3... Been bitten by this one too. ;) You are correct. I should have mentioned that. That is one of the advantages of the ASUS A8N-VM CSM board. While it has onboard audio, the on board audio is not the audio provided by the NVIDIA chipset. ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users At least two Nforce4 MB's (Biostar, Gigabyte) actually use Realtek 'hardware'. Although I could get nvidia drivers to 'function' with each MB, neither of them would work with Myth and the nvidia drivers... I ended up getting the 'latest' Realtek drivers and alsa updates, and that worked great. ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
On Wednesday 04 January 2006 00:55, Ian Forde wrote: On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 00:43 -0500, Steve Adeff wrote: On Wednesday 04 January 2006 00:34, Ian Forde wrote: I'd beware of NVidia chipset motherboards. NForce3 and NForce4 audio capabilities aren't completely supported in Alsa. Especially if you're thinking about using the SPDIF to do AC3... been working fine for me, both an nForce3 and nForce4 motherboards. That's weird... what motherboard and version of Alsa are you using? Mine's an AFI LanParty UT nF3 250Gb. I experienced the blue light goes on on receiver but I get no AC3 sound as listed in Alsa tickets 1083 and 1094... -I ECS KN1 Extreme MSI K8N Extreme your motherboard should have the Realtek ALC850 which is the same as my MSI board and works fine when using the intel ac97 ALSA drivers: snd_intel8x0 33664 0 snd_ac97_codec105028 1 snd_intel8x0 snd_ac97_bus3712 1 snd_ac97_codec snd_pcm_oss52896 0 snd_mixer_oss 17536 1 snd_pcm_oss snd_pcm89480 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss snd_timer 23432 1 snd_pcm snd52704 6 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer -- Steve ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
On Wednesday 04 January 2006 01:05, Steve Adeff wrote: On Wednesday 04 January 2006 00:55, Ian Forde wrote: On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 00:43 -0500, Steve Adeff wrote: On Wednesday 04 January 2006 00:34, Ian Forde wrote: I'd beware of NVidia chipset motherboards. NForce3 and NForce4 audio capabilities aren't completely supported in Alsa. Especially if you're thinking about using the SPDIF to do AC3... been working fine for me, both an nForce3 and nForce4 motherboards. That's weird... what motherboard and version of Alsa are you using? Mine's an AFI LanParty UT nF3 250Gb. I experienced the blue light goes on on receiver but I get no AC3 sound as listed in Alsa tickets 1083 and 1094... -I ECS KN1 Extreme MSI K8N Extreme your motherboard should have the Realtek ALC850 which is the same as my MSI board and works fine when using the intel ac97 ALSA drivers: snd_intel8x0 33664 0 snd_ac97_codec105028 1 snd_intel8x0 snd_ac97_bus3712 1 snd_ac97_codec snd_pcm_oss52896 0 snd_mixer_oss 17536 1 snd_pcm_oss snd_pcm89480 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss snd_timer 23432 1 snd_pcm snd52704 6 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer I should point out, this is for both the ALC850 on the K8n and the ALC655 on my KN1. Also, some boards have a BIOS setting where you can force the audio chipset into their native mode or AC97 mode. I haven't come across this with the Realtek chips, but it could still be out there on another motherboard. OR If you see such a thing in your BIOS and your having trouble with your sound, set it to AC97 mode an ALSA should detect it as an AC97 audio chip and load the appropriate intel drivers. -- Steve ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 01:36 -0500, Steve Adeff wrote: your motherboard should have the Realtek ALC850 which is the same as my MSI board and works fine when using the intel ac97 ALSA drivers: Yep - definitely the ALC850. And the intel ac97 drivers load up. Incidentally, the vendor is DFI, not AFI. Typo on my part... snd_intel8x0 33664 0 snd_ac97_codec105028 1 snd_intel8x0 snd_ac97_bus3712 1 snd_ac97_codec snd_pcm_oss52896 0 snd_mixer_oss 17536 1 snd_pcm_oss snd_pcm89480 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss snd_timer 23432 1 snd_pcm snd52704 6 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer I should point out, this is for both the ALC850 on the K8n and the ALC655 on my KN1. Also, some boards have a BIOS setting where you can force the audio chipset into their native mode or AC97 mode. I haven't come across this with the Realtek chips, but it could still be out there on another motherboard. OR If you see such a thing in your BIOS and your having trouble with your sound, set it to AC97 mode an ALSA should detect it as an AC97 audio chip and load the appropriate intel drivers. Mine only has the BIOS setting: AC97 Audio which can be set to Auto or Disabled. So no native mode... Alsa had no trouble loading the drivers, and PCM audio worked just fine. It's just the AC3 audio that doesn't work. If yours is working fine, can you post the 'lspci -v' output and send me your asound.state and .asoundrc files? Thanks, -I ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
[mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
(On the backend, I plan to have multiple tuner cards, 300GB+ SATA hard disks, 1.5GB RAM, etc.) I need a frontend to mainly view Live TV and recorded shows. What would you recommend as the minimum hardware requirements for a frontend? ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Minimum hardware requirements for a Frontend
R wrote: (On the backend, I plan to have multiple tuner cards, 300GB+ SATA hard disks, 1.5GB RAM, etc.) I need a frontend to mainly view Live TV and recorded shows. What would you recommend as the minimum hardware requirements for a frontend? Assuming that you are planning to view MPEG2 encoded Live TV and recorded shows, then you can get by with a VIA EPIA ME6000 for SD or a VIA EPIA ME6000 for HD. You can network boot from you backend, so there is no need for hard drive in the front end. You should be fine with 512MB of RAM. I have both these setups and they work well. These VIA boards work fine with their pathetic CPUs because they have MPEG2 hardware decoders. However, if you plan to use a video format other than MPEG2 for you shows, then they may be too underpowered. Another choice is an AMD processor on an NVIDIA chipset based motherboard. I have been playing with an AMD Athlon64 3200 on an ASUS A8N-VM CSM. Even without the NVIDIA XvMC support (it is broken in the drivers for the motherboard chipset), it has not trouble with SD. I have not tried it for HD. The nice thing about this setup is that it has DVI and enough horsepower to handle MythGallery and non-MPEG2 video formats. Again 512MB of RAM should be enough. I run MiniMyth http://linpvr.org on my front ends. Currently, it support the EPIA boards. While I have not released a version that supports the ASUS motherboard, I have it working and am using it for my primary viewing. ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
