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Improving DVD playback

Hi,

I'll be going down to London on Friday with Myth system in-hand to install it in my brother's house (it's a surprise present). So, you might be hearing more from me as I scrabble to try and get everything working :-)

The questions in this post will seem a little obvious, and I'm doing the best I can to discover the answers through testing. The problem I am having is that I cannot simulate my brother's setup that well, as the only video source I have is another computer which gives a less than perfect s-video signal. Your thoughts based on your experiences will be very useful.

When I first researched MythTV two months or so ago, the PVR 350 seemed like the obvious choice. The machine will be used for SDTV from a Sky box, DVD playback using xine and MythMusic.

The system also contains a Nvidia 6200, but could also be fitted potentially with a 6600GT with component/svideo out (bit of a waste?).

The TV playback looks great, but the DVD playback not so. The main processor is an Athlon XP 2400+ (2Ghz) so could stand to do some work. Is there any way that I can involve the CPU in some extra processing to make the DVD playback's motion compensation work better?

I imagine I would get better DVD results with the Nvidia card, but I just cannot imagine that it could come close to the quality of the PVR's tv out.

Any thoughts on which card to use (for SDTV, music and DVDs (in that order))? I only have a limited amount of time to complete the installation there so I really need to have this down by Friday.

I would be happiest if there was a way to improve the DVD playback using the PVR's output.

xine command: xine -r auto -f dvd:%d

Also, I have seen people recommend mplayer over xine for DVD playback. Menus are relatively important hence xine.

If nothing can be done, then the TV and music side are most important and the DVD playback is adequate so not necessarily a big issue. I thought it would be nice for my brother to be able to play DVDs of unusual regions using the system, but wouldn't want to compromise the TV playback quality just for DVD playback by using the Nvidia card.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Gmail is playing up. Hopefully this message will appear only once.


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