[mythtv-users] Mythtv usability, the Superbowl and a couple of issues

[boehm100 at comcast.net]

Hi,

I'm using Mythbuntu .24-fixed (v0.24-150-g08a8a65 updated yesterday).  My setup is a separate front and backend.  The front end uses nvida 240 with VDPAU.  The issues I found are not a big deal but worth noting.

1) Could not find the "toggle commercial skip" from the Menu durring playback.  I thought the toggle was available durring playback in pervious versions of Mythtv.  Had to hop out all the way to Setup TV Playback to toggle it off.

2) Not a Super Bowl issue but something I noticed in the very latest .24-fixed from yesterday.  There appears to be some truncation and strange character fill going on in a couple of places. Like: The Change Group Filter list in Watch Recordings and in Watch Videos. Some names display as something similar to this: "Gone with the Wi============="

3) 1.5x playback speed is VERY jumpy. I tried CPU-- and slim with little effect.  My guess is that this is a limitation of FFmpeg.  It seem worse than in pervious versions if Mythtv. I wish Rewind/FFwd and higher speed playback was liquid smooth.  It's nasty horrible. (Very technical description, I know.)

4) Is there a one key toggle, for turning on and off accelerated playback? There are a lot of key presses to move thru the menu.  The family approval factor took a hit. I'm expecting a "look it up in the manual" answer for this one. :-)

4) After I caught up with realtime I wanted to switch to livetv. I don't use LiveTV very often.  The screen froze at "Please wait" and I was forced to kill the frontend and relaunch. Here is a snip from my frontend log. 

2011-02-06 19:00:21.636 MythCoreContext: Connecting to backend server: BACKEND_IP:6543 (try 1 of 1)
2011-02-06 19:00:21.636 Using protocol version 63
2011-02-06 19:00:21.744 Spawning LiveTV Recorder -- begin
2011-02-06 19:00:22.123 Spawning LiveTV Recorder -- end
2011-02-06 19:00:22.134 We have a playbackURL(myth://BACKEND_IP:6543/1800_20110206190022.mpg) & cardtype(DUMMY)
2011-02-06 19:00:22.134 We have a RingBuffer
2011-02-06 19:00:22.337 Clearing OpenGL painter cache.
2011-02-06 19:00:22.525 VDPAU: Created 2 output surfaces.
2011-02-06 19:00:22.525 VDPAU: Created VDPAU render device 1920x1080
2011-02-06 19:00:22.575 Player(7): Video timing method: USleep with busy wait
2011-02-06 19:00:22.575 TV: Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
2011-02-06 19:00:22.575 TV: State is LiveTV & mctx == ctx
2011-02-06 19:00:22.578 TV: UpdateOSDInput done
2011-02-06 19:00:22.578 TV: UpdateLCD done
2011-02-06 19:00:22.578 TV: ITVRestart done
2011-02-06 19:00:22.585 MythUIHelper, Error: LoadScaleImage(/home/****/.mythtv/channels/krcw_cw32_portland.jpg)Unable to find image file
2011-02-06 19:00:22.588 MythUIHelper, Error: LoadScaleImage(/home/****/.mythtv/channels/krcw_cw32_portland.jpg)Unable to find image file
2011-02-06 19:00:22.589 MythUIHelper, Error: LoadScaleImage(/home/****/.mythtv/channels/krcw_cw32_portland.jpg)Unable to find image file
2011-02-06 19:00:22.590 MythUIHelper, Error: LoadScaleImage(/home/****/.mythtv/channels/krcw_cw32_portland.jpg)Unable to find image file

Is the channel icon dir supposed to be on the frontend?  Manual copy the dir or some backend setup for this fix?

Thanks,
Jon