Re: MythTV HD? -- MEdia Driven Universal Storage Array (MEDUSA)

["Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

On Tue, 2005-01-18 at 19:57, mike808@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
> Looks like from the pchdtv forums folks are talking about getting
> 5.1 streams and it sounds like since the decoding is done in software,
> a full digital AC3 output is available for your soundcard.

Yeah, ATSC is 19.2Kibps or 2.4MiBps, around 8.5GiBph.  That's similar to
QAM -- hence why HDTV DirectTiVOs get about 13 hours of recording on a
120GB disk.  Decoding is software is easy if the stream is only around
2.4MiBps.

Of course, at 8.5GiBph, 40 hours will run you about 350GiB (376GB)!

> So if your soundcard has an SPDIF, or supports 5.1, then your HDTV
> streams will too.

Yep.  Such cards are not too expensive, although cheaper cards tend to
taxi your PCI interconnect more than others (because they use the CPU
to do too much).

> It sounds like the main problem is broadcasters improperly or not at
> all identifying the sound channels in the stream as stereo or 5.1.

Correct.  I am Toshlink on everything at home with a Logitech Z-680
THX/AC-3 setup -- DirecTiVO, Xbox/PS2, DVD.  There is so much that
doesn't come in 5.1 that claims so, because of the actual relay done by
the DirecTV service, and I heard the local broadcast is the same.

> I saw references to only PBS and some FOX sports programming being 5.1
> in HDTV.
> Who knows what the STL HDTV broadcasters are sending out currently.
> My guess is that some of us will soon know... :=)

I'm so glad you guys brought this up, because I forgot about the
broadcast flag going.  I was also thinking of building an older
nForce2/AthlonXP system for this purpose, but now I think I'll just
reuse my old AMD762MP/AthlonMP system instead (as I upgrade to
nForce4/Athlon64 or Opteron for my workstation).

Which made me consider building what I call ... MEDUSA
MEdia Driven Universal Storage Array (MEDUSA)  

I had a little thread on our PC_support list here:  
http://lists.leap-cf.org/pipermail/pc_support/2005-January/000120.html  
http://lists.leap-cf.org/pipermail/pc_support/2005-January/000122.html  
http://lists.leap-cf.org/pipermail/pc_support/2005-January/000125.html  
http://lists.leap-cf.org/pipermail/pc_support/2005-January/000128.html  
http://lists.leap-cf.org/pipermail/pc_support/2005-January/000131.html  
http://lists.leap-cf.org/pipermail/pc_support/2005-January/000134.html  
http://lists.leap-cf.org/pipermail/pc_support/2005-January/000137.html  
http://lists.leap-cf.org/pipermail/pc_support/2005-January/000138.html  

-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                    b.j.smith@ieee.org 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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latter, and no basic security, patch or downtime comparison at all.




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