[mythtv-users] Playback of HDTV MPEG recordings on Mac OS

[James Crow]

Chase Douglas wrote:
> On Apr 12, 2009, at 2:58 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
>> On Sunday 12 April 2009 12:48:19 Seth Heckard wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have somewhat of an off-topic question, but I figure this is as good
>>> of a place to ask as any.
>>>
>>> I have an Air2PC card that I use with MythTV to record my TV shows.  I
>>> travel a lot and copy the MPEG files from the MythTV computer to my
>>> laptop, a MacBook Pro (late 2008 edition).  It may not be the most
>>> elegant solution, but it enables me to catch up on my recordings on
>>> the road.
>>>
>>> However, the playback is pretty choppy using VLC.  Watching a 1080i
>>> file at fullscreen, it stutters a bunch, and that's without any
>>> de-interlacing or filters.  Quicktime does not recognize the MPEG
>>> files as valid, which is a shame, because I believe it is hardware
>>> accelerated.
>>
>> I think you have to get the MPEG2 codec for Quicktime if you want to 
>> play such
>> files with it. Last time I checked they wanted $20 or so for that.
>
> MPEG2 is actually supported, but the MPEG-TS container format is not. 
> MPEG-PS format is supported, but digitial tv is usually transmitted 
> using TS streams. My hope is that when Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) comes 
> out with a new QuickTime framework it will support TS streams. Until 
> then, I don't think there's any way to get accelerated decoding on OS 
> X, though I'm far from an expert in this area.
I don't own a Mac so take this with a large grain of salt, but if it is 
only the container that is not supported would a lossless transcode in 
Myth not produce the appropriate file?

Cheers,
James