> > <snip> > > > > After reviewing these products, I was under the impression that they're > > hardware *tuners* that do not perform any hardware encoding (which is left > > to the CPU/software). They have a new HD-5000 card that appears to boast > > more features than the previous card, with limited hardware support for > > demux'ing, but it doesn't appear as if it does full hardware encoding. This > > card is also able to receive unencrypted digital signals, so I believe my > > type of setup will fall under this category, and I should be able to use > > this card (if it's not simply just a tuner). > > > > > > http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?products_id=46&osCsid=7c5c1287a18541561a83e932b1d7c8fd > > > > <snip> > > > > You are correct, they are hardware tuners and they don't perform any > hardware encoding. The reason they don't need to do this is that ATSC video > is already encoded and compressed into MPEG2 before it is broadcast. The > video recorded by the HD-3000 and Air2PC cards is just streamed over the bus > directly to the hard disk with very little CPU involvement. I have two > HD-3000 cards and can record with both at the same time while using less > than 5% of a 3Ghz Pentium4 CPU. Playback on the other hand, requires quite a > bit of CPU time. I average about 85-90% CPU usage when playing back 1080i > HDTV.
Thanks for the info, Brian. So I assume you're not using an nVidia card with a hardware MPEG2 decoder? Or, are you using an nVidia card, and its' MPEG2 decoder just doesn't cut it? - Ken _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
