Playing and decoding/encoding/saving/timeshifting are different things =)

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 14:53:29 -0800, Brad Templeton
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 05:14:11PM -0500, john roberts wrote:
> >
> > Has anyone gotten the Mini-mac to work as a frontend with ATSC content?
> >
> > I was reading the threads from last month and there was some question as to 
> > the CPU having enough to do smooth playback.
> >
> > Anyone?
> 
> I was speaking with the elgato folks who were demoing their eyetv HDTV PVR
> at our reception on Tuesday.
> 
> The "HD" they demo was 960x540p -- ie. 1/4 resolution, effectively.
> 
> They generally feel you need a dual G5 to decode full 1080i.  A single
> won't do it.   No way for an imac mini -- unless some day Apple releases
> APIs to control the mpeg decoder inside it.  But they have not been
> forthcoming.
> 
> An the other hand, it was interesting that they were able to write
> a special codec that could play 1080i at 960x540p resolution with the
> limited CPU available.   It means if somebody wanted to be a busy beaver
> they might also be able to write such a codec for linux that could let
> people play HDTV files, at this lower res (just fine for EDTVs) on lower
> powered CPUs without need for pre-transcode.
> 
> The codec of course has to decode the full stream.  They said the main
> thing was simply not having to deal with the memory bandwidth required for
> full HDTV (which is about 500mb/second for 1080p30fps which is what
> you usually get out of a deinterlacer) that made enough of a difference.
> 
> In theory a clever dec (2nd half half of codec) could save a bit of time
> knowing it was downscaling to 1/4 as well, but as far as I know nobody
> has written one.  It was interesting to see this working at least partway
> (at least for those interested in receiving HD and playing it on SDTVs
> with cheaper CPUs)
> 
> 
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> 
>
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