[pvrusb2] Feature Misconception of HVR-1950?

[Mike Isely]

On Wed, 14 May 2008, roger wrote:

> 
> On Wed, 2008-05-14 at 08:57 -0800, roger wrote:
> > http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr1950.html
> > 
> > "Notes:
> > For analog cable TV reception, you need an analog cable TV connection.
> > If you have a digital cable set-top box or a satellite box, the
> > WinTV-HVR-1950 can connect via either Composite or S-Video inputs.
> > Channel changing will be done using the IR Blaster."
> > 
> > Should probably be modified to read (or something similar):
> > 
> > "If the WinTV-HVR-1950 is connect via either Composite or S-Video inputs
> > channel changing cannot be done via the IR Blaster."
> > 
> > Or can channel changing be really configured if it is connected through
> > Composite/S-Video to the Digital/Satellite box?
> 
> The page does say, "IR Blaster to control satellite and cable TV set top
> boxes"?  Maybe analog satellite & analog cable -- but the way this is
> worded, it implies Echostar/Dishnetwork, etc.
> 
> 
> Also note Specifications seem somewhat high for watching 1080 resolution
> video?  64MB video memory too??

The high requirements aren't for the PVR-1950's driver.  They are going 
to be for the application that is trying to render HD video to the 
computer monitor.  HD video requires A LOT more CPU and GPU horsepower 
than old-school SD video.  A 1080i picture for example is 1920x1080, 
easily 4 times the pixels (perhaps even 16 times the pixels depending on 
the situation) than SD video.  This puts large demands on the software 
MPEG decoder (remember the device might hardware encode but somebody 
still has to decode at the other end), the video scaler, and the transit 
to video GPU memory.  Basically any modern PC (i.e. made in the past 3 
years) is probably OK, but an older machine will have problems.  I 
learned this lesson the hard way when I first tried to set up MythTV 
with HD tuners a few years ago.


> 
> Processor Requirements (minimum): 
>       * 1.0 GHz Intel P4 or equivalent (for watching cable TV)
>       * 2.2 GHz Intel P4 or equivalent (for watching high definition
>         ATSC or QAM digital TV)
>   * Available USB 2.0 port
>   * Graphics with 64MB memory (or greater)

For HD, I'd consider the above to be a bare minimum.  I have one 
HD-capable MythTV front end here working that uses an Intel P4 2.4GHz 
processor but it's barely there.  Had I known then (when I bought the 
hardware) what I know now I would have done things differently.  This is 
something I wrote about about how I set up MythTV here:

http://www.isely.net/mythtv_setup.html

(though it really focuses more on tricks for making multiple diskless 
front end systems rather than strictly the HD aspects)

  -Mike

-- 

Mike Isely
isely @ pobox (dot) com
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