[mythtv-users] 0.20 Mac PPC frontend on G4 550

[Wade Maxfield]

>Hi,
>
>I have an old PowerBook G4 550Mhz with Mac OS X 10.4 that I've been
>using as a spare frontend to play back recorded DVB-T content (no
>HDTV) from my Linux combined frontend/backend. The experience was
>never trouble-free under 0.19, because of the missing video
>acceleration on the Mac frontend. (I'm no expert on this, but I've
>been told that the Mac frontend didn't use all available system
>resources to decode the video, putting the burden completely on the
>CPU.)
>
>I'd hoped that would change a little bit with 0.20, but the opposite
>happened: In 0.19 the video would occasionally stutter but it'd play.
>In 0.20 any attempt to play video times out with a black screen. I
>tried playing around with setiing for frame skipping to no avail.
>
>I've been using the builds from thesniderpad.com for both 0.19 and
>0.20; I'm using the same build on my main laptop, an iBook G4 with 1.3
>Ghz without any problems, so suspect that 0.20 needs more CPU than
>0.19 on Macs.
>
>Does anyone else have MythTV 0.20 running on a G4 550 or a similar system?
>
>Jens

I've got 0.20 running under OS X 10.4.7 on a PowerMac G4 533DP.

DVB-S (NZ 720x576) uses about 60-70% (of one CPU).  No deinterlacing, 
using Standard decoder (using libmpeg2 drops it about 2%), running 
full screen 1280x1024.  On the Mac OS X settings page: Use vector 
color space is  on, scale video is on, skip 0 frames.  Playing back 
unscaled in full screen, or in a window all take about the same CPU 
according to top (within 1-2%)

Starting to playback takes about 8-12 seconds (compared to 6-8 
seconds on my G5), and switching menus is a fair bit slower as well, 
but once playing everything is fine.

Your PowerBook would be a little slower but it should be able to handle it...

  - Wade