[mythtv-users] Full system/CPU upgrade and still no DVD

Nick knowledgejunkie at gmail.com
Mon May 2 16:47:46 UTC 2005


On 5/2/05, Scott Harris <sharris at synthys.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> >
> > I purchased a new motherboard/cpu combo upgrading the AMD
> > Athlon 1800+ to an Intel P4 2.4GHz.  Spent about 4 hours
> > getting it all working again, verifying that I had basic
> > MythTV system working before even trying the DVD.  This
> > morning I tried the DVD and still the same error with mplayer
> >  "YOUR SYSTEM IS TOO SLOW TO PLAY THIS". Errrrr.  I'm using a
> > PVR-350 and of course don't have xvideo available, so I've
> > got to use -vo x11 on my mplayer.  I'm trying ogle now, and
> > while it hasn't completely died like mplayer there are
> > obvious frame drops.  CPU load is fairly low, .5-.66, I would
> > have expected it to be a lot more considering the cpu is
> > having to do all the decoding.
> >
> > Can anyone offer any recommendations?  I'm so close to having
> > an awesome mythtv system, one that even the wife approves of,
> > the only thing lacking is DVD playback.
> >
> 
> Well I've spent some more time playing with various settings on
> Xine and mplayer without much luck.  Xine certainly seems to be
> working the best but last night I ripped a dvd and then let Xine
> play it and then went to bed.  I awoke to the usual "too many frames"
> dropped from Xine.
> 
> I'm using this command for xine:
> xine -f -I -V xshm --audio-driver alsa --no-logo --no-splash dvd://
> 
> One thing that was recommended was to try different -V settings.
> >From my xine --help I see I have these installed:
> 
>  -V, --video-driver <drv>     Select video driver by id. Available drivers:
>                                dxr3 aadxr3 xv opengl caca xshm aa none xxmc
> sdl vidix vidixfb fb xvmc
> 
> How does one know which is the best choice for video driver aside from just
> trying them all?
> Is there a matrix some place?

Scott,

Which driver you use is dictated by the video card being used, and the
capabilities of the driver for that card. You will not use all of
these drivers (that xine supports) with all cards. I would suggest
using x11 and xshm for non-acclerated cards, and xv for accelerated
cards (or xvmc if the driver supports that).

Having read this thread, I am assuming that your video card does not
have TV-Out support, or that it does and you are not happy with it..
When I originally installed my system last year after months of
lurking in the various mailing lists, I tried to get everything
working over the PVR-350 card. Live TV and recorded program played
perfectly (in terms of quality, but not system speed), but I had
problems playing back DVDs and virtually all DivX and XVid video files
with MythVideo because of the missing acceleration in the ivtv X
driver..

My other big problem was the the TVout support for my video card
(integrated Radeon 9100IGP) was nonexistent except for a binary hack a
determined user had come up with for an old version of the driver.
Couple of weeks back ATI released their latest driver and another hack
was crafted to again get working TVout for the 9100 card, so I gave it
a whirl.

I decided to bite the bullet finally and go for *what works today*.
Using the TVout of the video card and not the PVR-350 (on a celeron D
2.4G/512MB system) everything came alive after I had moved away from
the ivtv non-accelerated X driver. Playback of video and seeking
within myth is now *much* snappier. The system actually responds
instantly unlike before when seeking ahead in recordings could take
30s or more. Mythvideo now plays all videos perfectly (using xv and
alsa) and no problems yet with mythDVD either.

This has also finally got the WAF sorted out - as a nerd is was cool
to be able to use the 350 for all output, but as >50% of the time the
system is used for non live/recorded-mythtv is was severely hampering
its usefulness. Now I have a fully functioning myth box that does
everything I want it to and no more nagging *why doesn't this work*
...

I'm still hoping the ivtv X driver will get xv support at some point
in the future after Hauppauge reveal more of their secrets and will
get it going again if this is the case, but at the moment I am more
happy to have everything working and no more stress *trying* to get it
to work using solely the 350 output.

The 'third way' is to run mythtv over your video card's tv-out and
employ the decoder on the 350 for live tv and recordings via another
connection to your TV\VCR. This will then give top notch playback
quality of TV through the 350, and accelerated playback of everything
else via your video card.

HTH,
Nick


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