[mythtv-users] Playing Myth recordings on Blackberry Playbook

Michelle Dupuis mdupuis at ocg.ca
Sun Jan 15 22:29:47 UTC 2012


My recordings are from satellite, through an HDPVR, which I thought uses H.264


________________________________
From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org [mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Richard Morton [richard.e.morton at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2012 10:46 AM
To: Myth TV Users List
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Playing Myth recordings on Blackberry Playbook

Hi,

I am guessing you are using an ATSC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC) tuner which is not something I know well as we use DVB in the UK.

however ATSC works similarly to DVB in that there is a tuner that tunes to a frequency and picks up a multiplex. A multiplex contains multiple tv channels (all broadcast on the same frequency). software then picks out the relevant channel from that multiplex for recording (and if you are using multi-rec, then 2 or more channels maybe picked out for recording).

the tv channel is already encoded using something like mpeg2 or h264 for the video and mp2, mp3 or aac for the audio. the combination of the video and audio is put into a stream. streams over the air have different limitations so they are encoded slightly differently and use a transport stream rather than the typical program stream used for desktop files of videos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_transport_stream)

So... your files are being recorded as mpg files containing h.264 video and aac audio, both of which the playbook (depending on the resolution of the files) should be able to play. The reality is that tablets and phones are _very_ fussy about what they will play. In order to create a micro-processor that can decode h.264 while remaining low power they make many assumptions and you must ensure that the video you pass the chip (tablet) meets these assumptions.

There are tools for this, but you are limited to either...
 - on the fly transcoding - you need a beefy computer for this - look at mediatomb
 - re-encoding all your files to a suitable format for both your TV and tablet... I wouldnt do this as the tablet will probably do 720i but your TV will likely do 1080p, so you'd be reducing quality for your main tv, but this would likely work for standard definition tv. look at tablet-encode, or the various transcode scripts on this list that have been discussed recently. Remeber to update your mythtv seek table for any recording files you modify and replace.
 - re-encode selectively and populate your tablet using rss feeds. have a look at mythpodcaster

sorry there isnt a one-size fits all answer, nor is there a satisfactory (my personal view) "in-the-skin" mythtv solution... but I hear it maybe improved in 0.25...

Hope that helps

R


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