TVtime : why does it eat my CPU ?? :-(

[Hendrik van den Boogaard]

TVTime eats so much CPU because it actually processes the input from
your grabber device before presenting it on the screen. Where XAWTV
only sends the raw videoframes to your videocard (and therefore cannot
go to fullscreen because it only supports a full PAL signal which is
720x768 (or something like that)). Sending these raw frames works
directly over the PCI bus (AFAIK) and so the processortime is about 0%.




TVTime re-encodes the frame to use de-interlacing and things like that.
This generates a lot of overhead and CPU usage.



I have encountered similar problems with TVtime. On my system, the old
grabber device (a Connexant 848 compliant card, let's say 10 years old)
gave some out-of-sync audio and video. The audio was sent through a loop
cable to the soundcard, but processing the screen took so much time that
the video was always lagged. I now use a new Hauppauge PVR-150 which is
capable of grabbing to MPEG directly which is also handy for recording.
Instead of using tvtime I use a dedicated tv server with MythTV.



Alternatively, you can put your resolution on 800x600 when watching TV,
and use a 50 or 100 hz refresh rate to prevent 'ugly scrollers'. Or you
can give mplayer a try for your tv output. Something like 'mplayer
tv://' should work.


-- 
Hendrik van den Boogaard