thanks to some off-list help from Darren Salt, i got vdr working on my desktop system and am starting to get a handle on how it all works.
now i'm ready to start planning my dedicated VDR box. i've got a DVICO fusion lite card and am planning to get another DVB-T card (probably a Nova T). i've also got a few 80GB PATA drives (seagate barracuda V, 8MB cache) left over from when i upgraded my desktop to 200GB drives.
so, what hardware would make an ideal vdr machine, given that i want:
1. smooth playback of recordings and of live TV 2. possibly simultaneous recording of two programs (or recording one while watching live TV or a recording). 3. occasionally i will want to burn stuff i want to keep to CD or DVD, without interfering with either recording or smooth playback. and without producing coasters because the system is overworked. of course, i could do this on my desktop, but would prefer to do everything on the vdr box. 4. working infrared remote control 5. decent sound quality 6. minimal hassle with kernel compiles - i.e. preferably GPL drivers included IN the standard kernel sources
a nice (but not essential) extra would be the ability to occasionally run X on my TV (a panasonic TX-47P800H rear-projection, 1080i HD capable) to run firefox or some other browser...and useful applications like mozilla calendar, maybe even mutt in an xterm.
i guess that 256 or 512MB would be more than adequate (the more ram, the better the disk buffering) - and since the price difference between 256 and 512 is minimal i may as well get 512M.
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.
- what video card to get?
i have a matrox G450 in my desktop - is that adequate? i'm thinking of upgrading my desktop video card anyway, which will leave the matrox spare. actually, i'm sure it's adequate - the real question is, "is it a *good* card for a dedicated VDR box?"
any recommendations?
craig
ps: like my desktop, the vdr box will be running debian.
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. At least here in Germany the best price per GHz according to http://www.geizhals.net/deutschland/?cat=cpuk7sa&sort=r is an AMD Duron 1800Mhz, which should be more than adequate.
The only function you can always speed up with a faster CPU is re/encoding for DVD burning, but unless you do that several times a day, I would not spend extra money for a few minutes less wait time.
what video card to get?
i have a matrox G450 in my desktop - is that adequate? i'm thinking of upgrading my desktop video card anyway, which will leave the matrox spare. actually, i'm sure it's adequate - the real question is, "is it a *good* card for a dedicated VDR box?"
Matrox cards are know to produce the best signal quality. So, get an Nvidia card with DVI output and a flat panel for your desktop (then signal quality will not matter) and use the Matrox for your VDR system.
Carsten.
On Saturday 26 February 2005 14:05, 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. At least here in Germany the best price per GHz according to http://www.geizhals.net/deutschland/?cat=cpuk7sa&sort=r is an AMD Duron 1800Mhz, which should be more than adequate.
The only function you can always speed up with a faster CPU is re/encoding for DVD burning, but unless you do that several times a day, I would not spend extra money for a few minutes less wait time.
IMHO you need to correct your number by the price of electrical energy according to the calculation power per watt - i guess mobile CPU/system's will then have the nose in front, in just one year the amount of saved energy easily returns the investment for the slightly higher price of the cpu.
Guido (trying to safe the planet ;-)
In 4220823C.3090609@icem.com, 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.
I demand that Guido Fiala may or may not have written...
On Saturday 26 February 2005 14:05, 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. At least here in Germany the best price per GHz according to http://www.geizhals.net/deutschland/?cat=cpuk7sa&sort=r is an AMD Duron 1800Mhz, which should be more than adequate.
Bus speed's also relevant. Presumably, that one requires something faster than 233MHz (which is what I'm using).
The only function you can always speed up with a faster CPU is re/encoding for DVD burning, but unless you do that several times a day, I would not spend extra money for a few minutes less wait time.
IMHO you need to correct your number by the price of electrical energy according to the calculation power per watt - i guess mobile CPU/system's will then have the nose in front, in just one year the amount of saved energy easily returns the investment for the slightly higher price of the cpu.
That and switching on power-saving features whatever you're using. For that Duron, I suggest installing athcool (you'll need ACPI).
Guido (trying to safe the planet ;-)
s/safe/save/, unless you're trying to verb an adjective in trying to make it less dangerous ;-)
On Sat, Feb 26, 2005 at 03:05:48PM +0100, Carsten Koch wrote:
- what video card to get?
Matrox cards are know to produce the best signal quality. So, get an Nvidia card with DVI output and a flat panel for your desktop (then signal quality will not matter)
i've got a philips 201P 21" CRT - excellent monitor, i have no intention of replacing it with an LCD (quality tends to be crap unless you spend a fortune, with fuzzy unreadable text, and they give me headaches. i'd rather have a 15" CRT than a 19" LCD).
maybe in a few years LCD monitors will be good enough to consider as a replacement.....i certainly like the minimal physical space that they take up.
and use the Matrox for your VDR system.
ok, that's what i'll do then. new card for the desktop, and the matrox goes into the vdr box.
for CPU, sounds like any modern CPU will do. i'll consider getting a low-power mobile variant.
craig
Le lundi 28 février 2005 à 10:09 +1100, Craig Sanders a écrit :
i've got a philips 201P 21" CRT - excellent monitor, i have no intention of replacing it with an LCD (quality tends to be crap unless you spend a fortune, with fuzzy unreadable text, and they give me headaches. i'd rather have a 15" CRT than a 19" LCD).
Ooooh a masochist!!!
I'd rather have a 15" TFT than a 21" Philips. In fact I do have one. Crisper text, no flickering, no heat, less power consumption, I can take it to work on site at clients... I could go on.
I'd rather have a 21" Sony that a 21" Philips. As this is the VDR list, I'd really like a 17" Acer 16:9 TFT for every day work. And to watch TV a 26" Samsung because Epia boards don't have DVI out.
Cheers
Tony
In 20050227230948.GA7634@taz.net.au, Craig Sanders wrote:
i've got a philips 201P 21" CRT - excellent monitor, i have no intention of replacing it with an LCD (quality tends to be crap unless you spend a fortune, with fuzzy unreadable text, and they give me headaches. i'd rather have a 15" CRT than a 19" LCD).
maybe in a few years LCD monitors will be good enough to consider as a replacement.....i certainly like the minimal physical space that they take up.
What on earth sort of LCD have you been looking at? Even my Dabs "Value" LCD (made by Mitac) from several years ago has crisper text than any CRT I've seen. The one I tried before that did seem to make my eyes water a bit though, so I didn't keep it, and the Dabs one I bought about a year later was half the price :-). Later I got a Sony DVI one to go with it, which is visibly superior to the Dabs, which I had been quite impressed with so far. If you tend to work with more than one window at a time, a pair of small displays is better than one large one.
If you saw one with fuzzy text it could have had its pitch setting wrong. Easily corrected.
On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 12:42:35PM +0000, Tony Houghton wrote:
In 20050227230948.GA7634@taz.net.au, Craig Sanders wrote:
i've got a philips 201P 21" CRT - excellent monitor, i have no intention of replacing it with an LCD (quality tends to be crap unless you spend a fortune, with fuzzy unreadable text, and they give me headaches. i'd rather have a 15" CRT than a 19" LCD).
maybe in a few years LCD monitors will be good enough to consider as a replacement.....i certainly like the minimal physical space that they take up.
What on earth sort of LCD have you been looking at? Even my Dabs "Value" LCD (made by Mitac) from several years ago has crisper text than any CRT I've seen.
the last one i spent any signifiant time with was some piece of crap that came with a compaq evo that was put on my desk at work about 18 months ago.
it was so bad, the next day i insisted on getting my old 17" CRT back..got it too, rescued it before it got thrown away (it was in perfect working order, but they were just throwing it out - presumably because it wasn't fashionable like LCDs)
The one I tried before that did seem to make my eyes water a bit though, so I didn't keep it, and the Dabs one I bought about a year later was half the price :-). Later I got a Sony DVI one to go with it, which is visibly superior to the Dabs, which I had been quite impressed with so far.
cool. if they're getting good already, i need to look at them again. i'll keep an eye on prices and start comparing specs & quality when decent 21" models become affordable.
If you tend to work with more than one window at a time, a pair of small displays is better than one large one.
the main thing i need is multi-gnome-terminal in crisp, clear 132 columns by at least 50 lines (multiple ssh sessions into various machines i need to look after). and multiple windows for firefox. for me graphics are definitely secondary, i need good quality text that isn't going to cause eyestrain even after 10 or 15 hours continuous use....that's essential, everything else is optional.
If you saw one with fuzzy text it could have had its pitch setting wrong. Easily corrected.
it could just be that that particular model of compaq LCD was garbage. cheap junk to go with the cheap junk desktop machine.
craig
Le mardi 01 mars 2005 à 13:40 +1100, Craig Sanders a écrit :
cool. if they're getting good already, i need to look at them again. i'll keep an eye on prices and start comparing specs & quality when decent 21" models become affordable.
Craig,
I've had mine for about three years... Affordable for me was under 1000€, since then the same screen can be had for 380€. In that time the savings on the electricity bill amount to the price difference between the TFT and a quality 17" tube. What you need to look for are brand name LCDs. That isn't the name on the screen often enough. You want Samsung, Sony (some are made by Samsung) or other big name brands.
Sounds like you need high resolution (over 1280 x 1024)? Sony make 1600 x 1200 TFT for about 1300€. That is what I paid for a 19" iiyama tube that went pop one week after the end of the guarantee...
Cheers
Tony
On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 08:09:35AM +0100, tony wrote:
What's about dead pixel ?
Does any producer offer a 0 dead pixel waranty and for how long ?
One dead pixel and for me a TFT is not worth anything...
Le mardi 01 mars 2005 à 11:51 +0100, Grégoire Favre a écrit :
What's about dead pixel ?
Does any producer offer a 0 dead pixel waranty and for how long ?
Yes they do now. It has become a sales pitch and some offer screens guaranteed 0 dead pixel, but they cost more...
One dead pixel and for me a TFT is not worth anything...
All of mine are zero dead pixel (Samsung multisync and Sony Vaio C1XD). Other half has work supplied HP pavilion with two dead pixels...
Always ask for the screen to be turned on if bought in a shop. But guaranteed screen if buying by mail order / on line.
Tony
In 20050301024052.GA11492@taz.net.au, Craig Sanders wrote:
cool. if they're getting good already, i need to look at them again. i'll keep an eye on prices and start comparing specs & quality when decent 21" models become affordable.
Don't forget an LCD's visible area is more comparable to the next size up CRT, because the latter's figure includes the bit you can't see behind the bezel. Most 19" LCDs are only 1280x1024 apparently (the same as most 17"), but you can get higher resolutions for a higher cost.
the main thing i need is multi-gnome-terminal in crisp, clear 132 columns by at least 50 lines (multiple ssh sessions into various machines i need to look after). and multiple windows for firefox. for me graphics are definitely secondary, i need good quality text that isn't going to cause eyestrain even after 10 or 15 hours continuous use....that's essential, everything else is optional.
Well, like I think I said, a good LCD should give crisper text than a CRT. In fact, it can appear too crisp and look a bit ugly without anti-aliasing, but I do find old-fashioned pixelly LucidaTypewriter still the most usable for terminals.
tony wrote:
Always ask for the screen to be turned on if bought in a shop. But guaranteed screen if buying by mail order / on line.
Alternatively, when buying online theres two options:
1) "It came like that in the box, guv!" or, if you dont like breaking stuff (cant bring myself to do it) 2) "Its got an annoying high pitched while / intermittent flicker / weird tint"
repeat: until screen = good
[sorry to take so long to reply. been v. busy this last week]
On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 08:09:35AM +0100, tony wrote:
What you need to look for are brand name LCDs. That isn't the name on the screen often enough. You want Samsung, Sony (some are made by Samsung) or other big name brands.
thanks for the advice.
Sounds like you need high resolution (over 1280 x 1024)? Sony make 1600 x 1200 TFT for about 1300?. That is what I paid for a 19" iiyama tube that went pop one week after the end of the guarantee...
i'm running my current CRT in 1792x1344 @ 75Hz. if i could find a decent LCD with at least that resolution (couldn't go any smaller, would prefer larger but the 201P gets a bit fuzzy at higher resolutions) for a reasonable price then i'd be tempted....but i'd probably still wait for a while.
i paid around $2000 AUD for the 201P about 3 years ago. imo, "reasonable price" means under $1600 AUD, and even less in six months[1]. $1AUD ~= $0.78USD at the moment.
[1] this is the key point for me. i'm happy enough with my current screen, and it has at least a few more years of useful life left in it. the longer i wait before replacing it, the cheaper and better and bigger the replacement will be.
my suspicion is that there are some quite large price drops coming for good LCDs in the not too distant future. we've already seen some, but i think there's a lot more to come. fortunately, i'm in no hurry :)
craig
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Carsten Koch -
Craig Sanders -
Darren Salt -
Grégoire Favre -
Guido Fiala -
Ian Molton -
tony -
Tony Houghton