[mythtv-users] Rollback to Mythtv 0.18.1 - weird prebuffering pauses

[stan at stanandliz.net]

Hi All

After having many problems with 0.19, I decided to roll back my 2 backends
(Epias) and 1 frontend (Xbox) to 0.18.1. I have 3 DVB-T tuners. I live in
the UK.

(Please don't tell me to upgrade back to 0.19! I was stuck on p9163
because any higher, I get a memory leak effect on the Xbox frontend! Tried
everything to fix it. Gave up.)

I run Gentoo on all my machines. I've found a collection of 0.18-r2
ebuilds and have recompiled using these.

I deleted the 0.19 database and started with a blank database based on the
0.18.1 template.

Having redone the whole set-up - mythtv-setup on the backends and
reconfiguration of the frontend. All it all works - but for weirdness on
watching Live TV and most recordings.

Most recordings, particularly on BBC One have prebuffering pauses every 3
seconds.

A more predictable pattern of prebuffering behaviour is this: when I
change channel, I get prebuffering pauses every 3 seconds until I come out
of Mythfrontend. When I go back in on the same channel, everything is
fine! This is true of ALL decoders and ALL channels.

I never had this when I ran 0.18.1 before. I'm a complete loss.

0.19 caused me and my wife misery (slow, liveTV would lock after each
program ended, very slow channel changes - just awful)

Now 0.18.1 Live TV only works properly if I come out and then back in to
Live TV! Most of our recordings now have prebuffering pauses! This never
happened when I last ran 0.18.1.

I've switched on all of the logging on the backends, but nothing unusual
is happening at all. I could really do with some help debugging this
problem.

I've tried just using 1 backend, but still the same behaviour. I've nuked
the database a couple of times now. I've gone through many permutations of
the mythtv-setup and mythfrontend setup.

I'm an experienced Mythtv user who started back with 0.17 and have always
been able to get past issues before - usually a hardware glitch or my
idiocy.

Please - is there anyone out there who can help?

thanks

Stephen