Hello everyone,

After reading all about Myth I decided to build myself a box last night. I'm strictly doing OTA ATSC channels, and intend to run all of Myth (frontend, backend, etc) on this one box. Amazingly it all worked on the first try.

However, the HD programming is viewing and recording a little "jerky". Also, playing a copied DVD (read extra compression) also won't play smooth. Haven't tried a store-bought DVD yet. Anyways I don't know if these playback problems are in my hardware or my settings. Here is my hardware:

AMD Sempron 2800 pin754
1 gb RAM (pc2300, DDR400)
Air2PC ATSC capture card (the $39.99 ebay special)
PNY "Verto" nVIDIA GeFORCE 6200 card (AGP, 256mb DDR)
Western Digital 250gb SATA hard drive
Memorex internal DVD burner

All brand new (since I recently tried recylcing an old computer into a Myth box and it didn't go so well.)

Setup was via KnoppMyth on CD. Downloaded it a couple of weeks ago.

So back to getting this to play smoothly:

When I was doing the setup there was a question that came up about nVIDIA cards warning about poor behavior or something like that, and offering the option to disable or something like that. Is there something I can perhaps enable to boost the video card performance?

Would more RAM make a difference?

Do I need to get a faster CPU? (hoping I can avoid this...)

Any other tips?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

Your RAM looks fine, theCPU spec is a little low, but if you enable XvMC (which should work with that video card) it'll probably be usable. See the R5E50 upgrade hints sticky posting for some possible patches in that regard.

I think I enabled XvMC. It was still a little jerky while watching live. I recorded a show this morning, and playback seems mostly OK, but the video still stutters occasionally. I haven't had enough time to really check that out, or see how a DVD plays, and I don't yet have audio hooked up either.

I think I'm resigned to a faster processor, especially since I'm going to add another ATSC tuner. My motherboard is socket 754 so I can put a good Athlon in it but I'd appreciate any hints or tips for speeding things up.

Thanks!

If your OSD didn't turn black and white, XvMC isn't working. See that thread for the fixes.

It didn't turn black and white. Its still in color.

I think I read the correct thread. I have to recompile the kernel, no?

Steve

No. You need to fix a config file that is pointing to the wrong location for the library.

This is the "R5E50 Upgrade hints and hazards" thread - http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=13108

See "Known Issue #10" in the head post.

BTW - For future reference - Go here http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=3 and note how the first seven or so postings (including the one above) are marked as "Sticky:". This is a feature of the BBS software which lets the administrator (Cecil or Dale) mark threads that they deem important, so that they stay at the top of the list under each subtopic. This include administrative details like posting rules, warnings about known problems, and current reference materials. If someone told you to find "Cecil's sticky posting on database repair", you could quickly scan the topics and know that it would always be one of the first few threads.