[mythtv-users] Prebuffering Pause and memory

[Brad DerManouelian]

On Aug 28, 2008, at 11:29 AM, Michael Wisniewski wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Prebuffering pauses seem to be a fairly large problem.  I've seen my
> fair share of them and am slowly getting annoyed with it.  My question
> is how to fix it.

Prebuffering pause means the frontend is trying to use data that isn't  
available, yet. Unfortunately, there are so many things that could  
cause the problem that there is no simple answer and the frontend has  
no idea why the data isn't available so it can't tell you. I think of  
that message like the "Service Required" light on my car. Even "PC  
LOAD LETTER" is more helpful.

> I'm *thinking* my problem is not enough memory.  I have an AMD 64
> 2.2ghz dual core processor with 1 gig of ram.  When I run the 'free -o
> -m" command while watching live tv, my free memory hovers around 50
> meg.  However, at the same time, it doesn't use any swap.  My question
> is...if I add more memory to the machine, will it fix the prebuffer
> pauses?

I usually get the message associated with poor disk I/O, networking I/ 
O, or bad source material (bad signal/noise ratio on OTA content). If  
you're not swapping, it's not a low memory issue. It will swap if it  
needs to. If you are swapping and getting the problem, it could be  
disk I/O associated with swapping and more memory would help.

-Brad