First of all, thanks to everyone for their kind and elobrate input. I really appricate the discussion. I haven't pulled the trigger yet on purchasing the card, and this is my way of doing my homework before investing in something. > If you're using Linux exclusively (no windows) you might look into the > Fusion5 Lite instead. It doesn't come with all the extra windows > apps, so it's around $50 cheaper. As far as I understand, the Lite has the old Brooktree chip (for the NTSC decoding part of it), whereas the Gold has the newer cx88 chip. I'm sure the cx88 driver will eventually mature to be as stable and proven as the bttv driver, so no worries there. bttv driver seems to have been around forever, and hence I can understand your preference of Lite over Gold. > > I use the Fusion3 QAM, and it has worked well for me. The Fusion5 is > supposed to have a better tuner, so it's better for OTA reception. I like the fact the Fusion5 has the 5th generation LG chipset, which is why I'm after it. > > As others have mentioned, your CPU is a bit weak for HD MPEG2 > decoding/display. Even with XvMC acceleration, I still don't think it > would be up to the task. > > One option is to keep that system running as your server, slap the > Fusion card in it, and run the MythTV backend on it. Receiving / > recording HDTV programs takes very little CPU, so it should be okay on > that system. Then, you'll just need a frontend system to support > playback (it connects to the backend over the network).. without > needing disc and PCI cards you have more felxibility on making a > small/quiet frontend system. > Woah...slow down now. This is really interesting. I didn't know it was possible to have a two tiered setup for MythTV. I might be able to do this. I can't come up with one fast P4 system, but I can surely come up with another P-III system (maybe one with an AGP port) that sits behind the TV. How would this work? What would be the primary protocol enabling the two systems to talk and exchange information? I'll google around for this type of MythTV setup right after I finish this email. -Jig
