[mythtv-users] xbox frontend

Dennis Cartier pvr at trigger.net
Wed Jul 30 10:52:30 EDT 2003



> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces at snowman.net
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at snowman.net]On Behalf Of MegaDeTH
> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 8:05 PM
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] xbox frontend
>
>
> Here's the rough install directions I use, I've got 2 acting as
> frontends, it's rough, I've got some notes strewn in with the directions..
>
>
> setup xbox (boot debian cd)
>

How is the speed using Debian? I just got GentooX Home v2.0 running with
MythTV on my XBox and I am finding it too slow. I replaced KDE with EvilWM
and it is still laggy. My frontends use PVR-250's so the stream is MPEG2,
the sound stays in perfect sync, but there is a slightly noticeable
'slowness' to the video, just barely perceptible, just enough to be
annonying. I think it is dropping frames. It is using Xvideo though.

I tried dropping the resolution on the captures from 640x480 to 480x480, but
it is still there. When I run this on my PC based frontend, 1.4G Athlon,
this slowdown is not there.

I am looking into compliling Myth with the optimizations for the Pentium3
rather than PentiumPro to see if it helps. I tried adding the SSE flag to
the settings.pro file to squeeze a bit more speed out, but the compile fails
due to a conflict with one of the lame header files. I am not sure if
anything would have used SSE instead anyway.

One thing I noticed is that the frontend process grows quite large ~ 32M.
Since the XBox only has 64MB, and it is shared with the video, perhaps it is
swapping. The load average hovers around .5 and the CPU utilization is about
60%.

One thing I was thinking of is creating a stripped down lighter frontend
exceutable that that does not include the features that I will never use
since I am MPEG2 only. Things such as DIVX and RTJPEG and possibly the
NuppleVideo container support. Since these are likely compiled as shared
libraries anyway, not sure how much it would save. I guess it depends if the
library is loaded regardless of whether or not that particular feature is
used. Not sure.

Any suggestions?

Dennis












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