[mythtv-users] problem with audio underruns on 720p only

[Jeffrey J. Kosowsky]

Greg Zornetzer wrote at about 21:29:35 -0800 on Sunday, December 7, 2008:
 > Hi Jeffrey et al,
 > Again, I apologize for what this is doing to threaded mail readers.
 > I hadn't thought to try the SD digital channels, since I just grab most of
 > those on an analog stream.  However, I can confirm that the audio underrun
 > problem does occur with 480i streams as well as the 720p streams.  1080i
 > streams are okay for me.  I don't know why 1080i doesn't work for you.
 > 
I'm not sure about 1080i - could all my channels be 720p? I am new to
HD but everything I get I grab off the air from the basic US networks
& local affiliates. So, maybe we don't have any 1080i or maybe my card
is not giving me any 1080i (I have a pchdtv 5500).

 > Out of curiosity, does transcoding fix the problem for you?  If you are
 > worried about being limited by graphics card throughput, you could play the
 > files directly from the storage directory using mplayer.  If that works,
 > you're probably not throughput limited (but that's my limited experience).

I can play recorded streams (even without transcoding) quite well on
mplayer. If I am using mplayer to play live streams, then I get some
hiccoughs (but not nearly as bad as with mythtv) if I don't use
XvMC. With XvMC, mplayer does very well even on Live.

Once transcoded to mpeg4, mythtv also does a fine job of playback
(which intuitively surprises me because I thought that decoding mpeg4
was slower & harder than decoding mpeg2).

Thanks