[mythtv-users] Tips on getting FE working completely

[Mark Boyum]

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 9:27 AM, Michael Watson
<michael at thewatsonfamily.id.au> wrote:
>
> On 18/01/2013 1:13 AM, Chuck Olson wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Chuck Olson <chuckol at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> ...snip...
>>>>
>>>> mythfrontend comes up just fine. I can watch "old" shows on the FE-attached
>>>> monitor (I have not tackled TV-out yet), but not "new" shows. By "old", I
>>>> mean shows that were originally broadcast years ago (like Barney Miller,
>>>> Mary Tyler Moore, etc.), presumably in much lower definition. By "new", I
>>>> mean any recently produced show like sports and modern sitcoms.
>>>>
>>>> When I try to watch the newer shows, the video is very choppy along with the
>>>> sound. With this in mind, I have a couple questions:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Even though my FE setup is ancient, should it still have enough
>>>> horsepower to be able to display SD content as I wish?
>>>> 2. If the answer to 1. is Yes, what should I start looking at to fix the
>>>> stuttering? I have held off on messing with the xorg.conf, but is it time to
>>>> bite into that?
>>>> 3. Reading through many earlier posts leads me to believe the fx5200 is a
>>>> stinker to configure properly in xorg.conf. Does anyone have a working
>>>> xorg.conf that works with this card that does SD and TV-out?
>>>>
>>> You didn't mention how the FE communicates with the BE nor how you are
>>> recording the "new" shows.  Pure speculation, but if the "new" shows
>>> are recorded in HD (>>2GB/hr) and the "old" shows are recorded in SD
>>> (~2GB/hr), here are two possible causes:
>>> 1) Is it possible that the FE is overtaxed in downgrading to SD
>>> quality on the fly to display the "new" shows?
>>> 2) The HD shows will require more bandwidth (more bits/second) to
>>> transfer the data to the FE.  Doing this with a WiFi or
>>> Ethernet-over-powerline link with inadequate bandwidth will cause this
>>> problem.
>>>
>>> Craig.
>>
>> 1) This is what I was suspecting, but was hoping for input from others that might have
>> similar setups. I read posts from back years ago and it seems others were doing this
>>
>> with low-power machines like mine back then.
>>
>>
>> 2) The FE communicates to BE via wired 100 Mbps ethernet and the link has
>> very low traffic aside from Myth video. From the info I gathered, this should be
>>
>> sufficient from even HD data, no?
>>
> If you havent already, try mounting the storage directories from the MBE on the FE via NFS or SAMBA.  In my experience, NFS works better than the "myth" protocol on older hardware.  IF your storage directory is "/storage/recordings" on the master, then you must mount it to the same location on the FE.
>

 If your FE has a PCIe slot you may consider getting a cheap VDPAU
capable card and let it scale the HD down to SD for you.