Media PC?

[ncage]

Hey everyone, im well onto my way to building a media pcand have some questions i guess and general comments?

1) I don't understand why there processor requirements are so high. Maybe if you were using a software decoding tv card i could understand but why would you be required 1.2 p4 to pause and play live tv when you have a tv card with an mpeg-2 decoder? Tivo record 2 channels at once or record one channel while you are pausing and playing another and it only has a 100-200mhz mips processor i believe. I don't understand the high requirements. Maybe if your encoding in mpeg-4 i could understand.


2) Im on my way to try to figure out if i want to setup a linux setup (mythtv,freevo) or microsoft (mce, sagetv, beyondtv). The only feature i noticed on mythtv that i really liked was the elimation of commercials when your encoding tv. I imagine the tv cards sometimes come with free software like this maybe also? As we all know linux will be harder to set up and will won't have as good of driver support. Im not a linux pro but i have dabeled enough with it that i can find my way around.

Currently the only exposure i have had to this type of thing is my Directivo which i really like. It does have its limitations though. I would love the ability to store the video on the network instead of on the tivo's HD. THis way if i needed more space i could just upgrade the hard drive on my file server. Also, possibly in the future i would like the ability to not only watch these programs on my main tv but say if i want to watch it on my tv in my bedroom (this is not a main requirement but it would be nice). I know you can do this with an media extender with mce but thats the only way it would work right?

I would likle the ability to watch dual streams or record one and watch another one just like my directivo.

Ok guys where im really wanting the main recommendations is should i go linux or windows? Another is which tv decoder card should i get (im not wanting to spend a bunch of money). Which software package do you recommend? Will this all work for me since i have directv?

 

[Peter]

1) You need a hardware ENcoder to save on CPU, and nothing at all with digital TV (which is MPEG right as it comes in). MPEG decoding is done even by the most primitive chipset-integrated graphics, in VIA's case even MPEG4.

 

[ncage]

Well i know i will need a mpeg encoder for what im doing because the tv card won't have a directv reciever built in. Ya i understand i need a hardware encoder but the cpu requirements seemed high even for systems that had hardware encoding? Are you telling me that i need a tv card with an mpeg decoder built in because the chipset will do it?

 

[jkoon]

2) Beyond TV will mark the commercials so you can skip them with the press of a button (and I think there are some addons that will let you remove them, but btv I?m sure wont be adding that as a supported feature anytime soon for potential legal reasons).

TV DEcoder card I would just get a nice video card that has tv-out (like an nvidia or ati card that supports directx9).

TV ENcoder card is where the real choices begin. I would strongly suggest getting a hardware encoder card (rather than a software based) epically since you want to be recording multiple things at once, with a software based card this would require a ton of cpu power. I have been very happy with the results of my PVR-250 from hauppauge, so I would suggest picking up a couple of their pvr-150 cards or maybe their pvr-500 card as I think it has dual tuners built in.

Edit, I overlooked that you had responded to this thread again?. So in response:

The requirements are still high for a couple reasons, one (and the major reason) is playing back the files. Most programs (like btv or sage) use their own interface to play back the recordings and the interface gives various bells and whistles but also ups the cpu requirements a fair amount. Also there is a lot of hard disk activity associated with recording multiple things at once (at a high quality the files can get rather large rather quickly).