[mythtv-users] Mythtv-frontend memory usage?

James Abernathy jfabernathy at gmail.com
Tue Dec 4 20:43:56 UTC 2018


I’m trying to build a Raspberry PI 3 B+ dedicated to Mythth-frontend.  I’m close to where I need to be, but years of working on selling CPUs into GFX and Video applications makes me hyper sensitive to minor video issues. I think it’s a curse in this case.

Giving 256MB of RAM to the GPU limits you some.  Things I noticed that surprised me a little.

1. If I have Raspbian Lite, Xserver, XFCE, and  lightdm  with Mythtv-frontend, Mybuntu 28.21 theme and an HDTV recording playing I have 35 MB of memory free with no Swap used. Here I launched mythfrontend after setting performance mode on scaling governor. 

2. If I only install  xserver, matchbox window manager, lightdm with the Mythtv stuff as #1 I also have 35 MB free

3. Using Openbox instead of Matchbox the same 35 MB free.

Both 2 and 3 autolaunch and autologin per the Mythtv RPI wiki

4. If I change the theme to the Default Mythtv 1.4/7 one,  then I have 122 MB free.

5. FE locked up if I tried to run the Xmas theme.  I imagine it has the largest memory load.

In either case the video performance is the same. Basically the video is great if the motion is not too fast.  quick panning is jumpy.

I basically followed the tips from the Mythtv Raspberry pi wiki.

Anything else I can try?

My goal is to use the RP3B+ as my frontend without having to use Kodi 18. The video performance of Kodi 18 on RP3 is very good compared to Mythtv FE, but the Kodi interface is not to my liking.

I have a NUC Core i3 running Xubuntu with Mythtv FE on it and it works perfectly, but I need the NUC else where.

BTW, I tested the Kodi 18rc on the NUC and it’s video is not as good as 17.6 and when it was installed it messed up the Mythtv FE. I had to uninstall Kodi 18rc to get Mythtv FE back to normal. The only way I could see the video issue was to watch a news crawl across the bottom of the screen. 

Jim A



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