[mythtv-users] LiveTV: stutter at program start/change resolved by short pause..?

[Michael T. Dean]

  On 10/01/2010 12:14 PM, Eloy Paris wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 01, 2010 at 11:20:38AM +0800, Mark Kendall wrote:
>
> [...]
>> 2. As per the OP, live tv will stutter on and off continuously until
>> given some sort of a poke (usually a pause). I used to see this on my
>> remote frontend, spent a large amount of time trying to debug it
>> (without success) and finally fixed it by ensuring that the setting
>> 'Always stream from the backend'(?) was enabled. That setting has been
>> removed in trunk (and hence 0.24) and it is now the default. That
>> said, I think whatever causes this problem is a pretty subtle issue
>> and what worked for me probably won't work for everyone. I may just
>> have changed some timing enough somewhere to avoid the problem. Given
>> the amount of code that has changed since 0.23, it may also be fixed
>> in trunk.
> Wow, this setting has been removed? If I use the Myth protocol to play
> my recordings I experience the problems that I described here:
>
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/452639
>
> Accessing the recordings via NFS gives me very smooth playing and
> instant rewind and fast forward.
>
> It'll be a bummer for me if I can't play my recordings by accessing them
> directly via NFS and if the performance problems I experience when using
> the Myth protocol to access the recordings are still there in .24.
>
> Do you know why the setting was removed?
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Sorry, I decided to look more into this after I originally wrote my
> email. Here's what I found:
>
> http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/changeset/26011 contains the change that
> removes the setting. What the changeset does is to actually remove a
> way for users to set, via the GUI, the variable "alwaysStream". But
> alwaysStream is set to 0 by default. This means that a local file will
> be tried first, and if that fails, we will fall back to using the Myth
> protocol. That works for me ;-)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Right.  What the change does is make it so that users who want to use 
MythTV protocol for everything should simply not mount their recordings 
on their frontend systems (or mount them at some "other" location, to 
which MythTV does not have access).

The /far/ more common desire of users is to use "local" playback (using 
a local file or NFS/SMB).  To do that, simply mount the file system in 
the proper location (same as the backend system(s)), and it will do so.

In other words, we couldn't figure out a reason for the setting to 
exist--simply mounting or not mounting your backend file system 
determines whether you use the "local" file or stream from the backend.

Mike