[mythtv-users] Running into "prebuffering pause" a lot

[Bruce Markey]

Loren H. Burlingame wrote:
> This computer is running:
> 
> P3 500Mhz 256MB RAM

I'd recommend a CPU of at least 1GHz. That doesn't mean 3GHz,
I think a Duron 1.3GHz is just about ideal for a single bttv
card system. Even if someone has a hardware encoder card, there
is still the database, X, and other apps (normally I don't
replay for performance issues on systems under 1GHz but I'd
already started before I noticed this =).

> Voodoo3 video card

Sucks. I had a old Voodoo3 3000 that I remembered did TV-out.
About a year ago I thought I'd be smart to make use of it again.
I was quickly reminded of why it was stuffed away in a box. Get
any cheap nVidia card with TV-out and you'll be much happier.

> ESS Maestro2 sound card
> ATI TV-Wonder VE
> Gentoo 2.6.9-nitro2
> fluxbox WM
> Mythbackend
> 
> The MySQL server is running on another computer.
> 
> 
> I am able to record and play back shows just fine. I just cannot play
> live tv without it pausing every 1-2 seconds.
> 
> I have scoured message boards and have found people with similar
> problems though no real resolutions.

A lot of people have a lot of different issues. "prebuffering
pause" means the player doesn't have enough frames delivered and
ready to display so the player has to stop and wait for more. This
is a symptom like a cough, it could be a runny nose or lung cancer.

> Just curious if this hardware is too slow to run live tv? (tvtime
> works just fine and I can watch dvds and other movies with no problem)

Tvtime just needs to take the frames from the card then display
them. DVDs and movie files are playback only. MythTV is a recorder
that grabs the frames, compresses them and writes them to a file.
Next, it reads the file, uncompresses then and the player displays
the frames. This is much more work in order to allow time shifting,
remote playback and, the real purpose, recording for later playback.

You'll need to turn down your recording resolution to a point
where the CPU is not pegged:

  http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-21.html#ss21.3

You should still be able to get an acceptible resolution for
the picture. "Quality" isn't so much a matter of resolution but
more a matter of the signal quality, picture settings, color
reproduction, deinterlacing and frame timing. A good quality
picture will look good at high or low resolution, a poor
quality picture will look bad at low or high resolution.

--  bjm