In <4220823C.3090609@xxxxxxxx>, Carsten Koch wrote: > Craig Sanders wrote: > ... > >the main things i'm not sure about are: > > > > - what CPU to get? > > > > i'm tempted by an athlon 64, but then i'd have to start mirroring > > the a64 distribution of debian as well as the i386, and i'm > > generally not keen to pay a price premium to be a guinea-pig for new > > hardware....a64 and a64 motherboard designs probably won't be mature > > for another year or so. > > > > other alternatives P4 or and Athlon, with the athlon being slightly > > cheaper. > > VDR works happily with a 150MHz CPU if you have a full-featured card > or with under 1 GHz if you don't. But IME you need over 1.5GHz for a deinterlacing filter if you're using software decoding. My 1.2GHz Celeron can't cope, but a Duron 1800 can (with MPlayer's kerndeint; I haven't tried xine, which has a reputation for higher CPU load than MPlayer). This isn't necessary with hardware MPEG decoders, or with a Matrox's TV-out, but softdevice has a few problems with the latter eg loss of A/V sync when playing back recordings (may be OK with a decent soundcard whose clock closely matches the graphics card's), and not being able to use the mp3/mplayer plugin. -- TH * http://www.realh.co.uk
