Marc,

If I switch over to a console screen (Ctrl+Alt+F1) while playing live TV and run vmstat, I can see my CPU idle go to about 17 - 25%. I'm thinking this boils down to my video card or the nVidia drivers.



What does lspci show for you 6200 card? Mine gives me:


Whereas all my other Linux boxen give me actual (and correct) card details. I found this to be an issue when I tried to run nvtv - It fails with "Fatal: No supported video card found" - Ooops!



(Man, those fonts are huge with 8774!)
I have used numerous versions of the nVidia drivers. I guess I should step back and take a more scientific approach to the drivers (install and test revs incrementally instead of "willy-nilly") and see if that helps at all.

Failing that, my next step appears to be buying a new nVidia card. I will be sure to research more in-depth before my next purchase. That said, what is the model number of your eVGA? And what HD tuner are you using?

Thanks!

Scott

lspci shows the following for my video card:


In terms of fonts -- I've used the "displaysize" parameter in XF86config-4 to get to reasonable font sizes.

Not sure what model I am using beyond 6200. If you tell me where I can locate the model # you are looking for, I will see if I can find it.

For my tuner, I am using a motorola DCT-6200 box connected via firewire. My cable service provider is comcast.

Marc

OK, just a follow-up in case anyone happens upon this post...

It seems my problem was a combination of my hardware. With the D845PEBT2 board and P4 2.4Ghz I had nothing but static for audio while watching HD, but the picture seemed to move smoothly. When I tried HD on the ASRock mobo with a Celeron 2Ghz (don't laugh, it's all I had around ) I would get stuttering audio and video. Put the 2.4Ghz into the ASRock with the eVGA 6200LE and 512Mb RAM, and viola! Smooth HDTV playback, except when the OSD is up (I've read this is a known issue, I'm not going to worry about it).

The one thing I hadn't taken into account during all of my testing (and it was a lot of testing) is that the D845PEBT2 has a 4x AGP slot, whereas the ASRock has an 8x. I do not have enough expertise in this area to say this definitely was the problem, but it's the only thing I can come up with at this time.

So, in summary:

D845PEBT2, P4 2.4Ghz, eVGA 6200LE (256Mb), Fusion HDTV5 RT Lite = No Good (for me anyway).

ASRock P4i65G, P4 2.4Ghz, eVGA 6200LE (256Mb), Fusion HDTV5 RT Lite = Good!

Many thanks to those that helped me work through this!!

OK, to be completely fair, I had also created a Master backend, and the HD is being played through a diskless frontend (see Greg Frost's terrific script to set this up on page 2 of http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10098&highlight=nfsroot) with the aforementioned hardware. Maybe splitting up the duties eased up on the hardware requirements? Dunno...

Cripe! I love consistency...

OK, sorry if I got anyone's hopes up, but my frontend is no longer able to playback HD. Backend somehow ran out of space on the root filesystem last night (a whole new mystery, still haven't found where that 1.2Gb went), so I gave up on using the NFSroot FE. Installed R5D1 onto a 40Gb HD, same hardware, and I am back to square one - horrible HDTV playback, all static for audio.

I would prefer to let this thread die and I will start a new one if I get HDTV consistently to play back with my setup. Right now I'm going to go find some beer...

This will end up being a book, so I'll give you the opportunity to get out now! And if anyone needs some clarification on my incoherent ramblings, just let me know.

OK, here's what I ended up with:

D845PEBT2 with 2.4Ghz P4, eVGA 6200LE = not enough horsepower to consistently drive HDTV playback. I believe this has to do with the 4x AGP

If you have been following along you may recall I had placed the 2.4Ghz into an ASRock mobo, and had success playing HD back, but then the backend had problems and after a reconfiguration, back to no HD playback. OK, I guess I'm still underpowered and just got lucky for a little while.

So I have a P4 3.0Ghz in another mobo with 1Gb RAM. Fastest thing in the house. Tossed a drive in there, added the Fusion HDTV5 card, installed R5D1. Even on the onboard VGA I had HDTV playback (terrible picture quality, but playback was smooth and not stuttering). Great! I'll grab a PCIe card and we'll be on our way!

Popped the new PCIe card in, reinstalled R5D1 (I like repetition!), everything looks and sounds great. So in a fit of giddiness I remove the Fusion card, place it into the backend in the basement, setup the 3.0Ghz system as a remote frontend, and BINGO! Back to nothing but static when viewing HDTV, with choppy video. Consistency, gotta love it!

Now, I am a rather patient person, and while not the brightest star in the galaxy, I have managed to think my way through most issues I have run into during my MythTV dealings (and what can you say about that Google as a memory boost, huh?) This one had me stumped for weeks and, unfortunately, I believe I will never know the "solution". I figured it was some setting in MythTV, but where? I finally came to the conclusion that there was something associated with the hostname, as I had used the same name in all my testing/reinstallations.

OK, you've come this far, here's what I did - I deleted all the settings for the frontends from the database left the Fusion card in the backend, reinstalled R5D1 on the ASRock mobo with the P4 2.4Ghz and 512Mb RAM, upgraded to myth 0.20, reset it as a frontend only machine, and have been watching HDTV happily for the past 2 days! Not exactly scientific, but after 2-3 weeks of thinking I had it, only to be shot down again and again, I was getting desperate!!

PLEASE NOTE: I'm not stating that a P4 2.4Ghz is powerful enough to playback HDTV without flaws. I will be replacing this CPU with a faster one after the holidays, as I do notice some frame drops.

Again, my thanks go out to those that offered suggestions.