<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hello,<div><br></div><div>I am currently trying to investigate why my Mac mini frontend will not playback live TV and recordings smoothly for certain channels.</div><div><br></div><div>Some background info:</div><div><br></div><div><u>Backend</u></div><div>Dell PowerEdge T110II</div><div>Xeon E31230 3.2 GHz (Quad core +HT) CPU - 4 cores assigned to MythTV backend server</div><div>1GB RAM 1333MHz DDR3 assigned to MythTV backend server</div><div>Recordings stored on 3 1TB Seagate drives in md RAID5</div><div>Ubuntu 10.04 LTS x64</div><div>MythBackend fixes/0.24 [v0.24.2-19-g02dd6ee] - kindly provided by Mythbuntu repositories</div><div>HDHomeRun HDHR3 as the TV source - UK Freeview, so SD quality</div><div><br></div><div><u>Primary Frontend - TV</u></div><div>Mac mini (Mid 2010)</div><div>Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz CPU</div><div>4GB RAM 1067 MHz DDR3</div><div>NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256MB GPU</div><div>OS X Lion (10.7.3)</div><div><div>MythFrontend jyavenard/backports/fixes/0.24 [v0.24.2-216-g247c4f1-dirty] - Kindly provided by <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">Jean-Yves Avenard</span></div></div><div><br></div><div><u>Secondary Frontend - Office</u></div><div>iMac (Mid 2010)</div><div>Core i7 2.93 GHz CPU</div><div>8GB RAM 1333MHz DDR3</div><div>ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GPU</div><div>OS X Lion (10.7.3)</div><div>MythFrontend jyavenard/backports/fixes/0.24 [v0.24.2-216-g247c4f1-dirty]</div><div><br></div><div>My LAN is all gigabit.</div><div><br></div><div>Basically, I am getting poor playback performance on my primary frontend - the Mac mini. When I say poor quality, my best description would be that the picture is jumpy - motion is not 'fluid' and it appears 'jerky'. Slight glitches can be heard in the audio too. At first when I saw this issue, I thought that it was just the GPU was unable to cope. However, This weekend, I have decided to do some investigation into the issue, finally.</div><div><br></div><div><ul class="MailOutline"><li>If I record from a BBC channel, I get normal playback quality - i.e. the quality is as good as on my iMac</li><li>If I record from an ITV, Channel 4, etc. channel, I get poor playback quality, as described above.</li><li>If I watch live TV from a BBC channel, I get normal playback quality - i.e. the quality is as good as on my iMac</li><li>If I watch live TV from an ITV, Channel 4, etc. channel, I get poor playback quality, as described above.</li><li>I am able to play 1080p video on my primary frontend, with absolutely no quality issues through XBMC.</li><li>I am able to playback recordings from any channel in VLC on my primary frontend, with absolutely no quality issues.</li><li>I have monitored GPU usage on my primary frontend, and my GPU usage is around 15% (IIRC) when playing back recordings from any channel.</li><li>CPU usage is around 50% on my primary frontend when playing back recordings - I'm not sure this is all MythFrontend, but it proves the point that the CPU is not exhausted.</li><li>RAM usage hovers around 2GB mark on my primary frontend.</li><li>Backend server does not appear to be exhausted in any way.</li><li>I have tried all playback profiles on my primary frontend.</li><li>All recordings and live TV plays back fine on my secondary frontend (the iMac), but I rarely find the time to use MythTV on this machine.</li></ul><div><br></div></div><div>As you have gathered, I'm a little bit stuck now, on what could be causing this issue, and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas how I should proceed with this?</div><div><br></div><div>I'm not sure what the significance of the different behaviour with different channel providers is - the fact that I get good playback quality in other apps on the same frontend and BBC channels (to me) proves that the frontend is 'capable'.</div><div><br></div><div>I really hope someone could help me out with this.</div><div><br></div><div>Many thanks,</div><div><br></div><div>Joe</div></body></html>