[mythtv-users] Choppiness w/ transcoded digital broadcast

[f-myth-users at media.mit.edu]

    > Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 17:25:32 -0500 (EST)
    > From: "Chris Pinkham" <cpinkham at bc2va.org>

    > This is due to the fact that the original "nuv" is actually a MPEG file
    > just named .nuv.  The transcoded .nuv file is a nuppel format file so
    > you need a patched mplayer using the patch I mentioned in my email.  Stock
    > mplayer plays the original nuppel format files, but not Myth's modified
    > version.

Is this patched mplayer required to play -anything- produced by
mythtranscode?  I'm running what Ubuntu claims is 1.10pre7 (and
which identifies itself as "MPlayer dev-CVS--4.0.2"---wtf?) and
have (almost) never been able to play transcoded files without
mplayer blowing up and taking my window system with it.  (This
Myth was installed from the 0.18.1 Ubuntu package, and I don't
recall if the package installed its own version of mplayer.)
I'm just doing the default ivtv MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 transcoding.

I've just done some (more) searching about this in the HOWTO
and various other places and don't see anything definitive;
am I missing something?  Should something be added to the wiki
and/or the HOWTO?  (HOWTO-23 just claims I need 1.0pre1 or later,
which I'm reasonably sure I have.)

Because of this, I just gave up on ever transcoding anything,
but I'm willing to try again if there's some easy fix.  (The
transcoder also knocked the audio down many dB; I sent a separate
question about that.)

I asked about this on 12/10/05 but never heard anything back;
it's thread 166522 in the gossamer-threads archive.

Tnx!