[mythtv-users] Freevo, Tivo & MythTV

Marco Nelissen marcone at xs4all.nl
Sat Nov 18 04:30:17 UTC 2006


>I'm not exactly what I'd consider a power user, I don't watch 47
>channels at the same time.  But when I do watch LiveTV I do watch
>about 3 shows at the same time flipping between them.  But, just like
>TiVO, I choose the 3 shows, set them to record, and then flip between
>them.  My (truly extremely vague) understanding of how TiVO works with
>LiveTV viewing is that it buffers (using the second tuner) either
>another channel, or the previous channel you were watching.

This is incorrect. If you change channels on a dual-tuner tivo (there
are many models that have only one tuner), it switches channels on
the tuner you were watching, UNLESS that would cause that tuner to
switch to the channel that the other tuner is on, in which case it
just switches you to the other tuner. In general, tivo prefers not
to have the two tuners on the same channel, though there are some
ways to get it to do that.

>  In either
>case, if I randomly change to some distant channel, the TiVO takes
>just as long as my Myth box does *if* I don't choose to record those
>shows.

This is again incorrect. Tivo switches channels much quicker than
mythtv does, for reasons yet unknown. Other apps on linux also switch
channels much quicker than mythtv does (on the same machine).

>Serious?  It's not even a problem, much less serious.  However, if you
>can invent a machine that will beam data back to the present from the
>future to allow my MythTV system to have data before it's broadcast, I
>may just consider buying one.

There is no need for this magical "data from the future" scenario that
you use to ridicule the problem that the original poster described.
Nobody is asking for channel changes to be instantaneous. Nobody is
asking for zero-overhead buffering. Nobody is asking for the impossible.
It's been demonstrated over and over again that changing channels on
mythtv is just plain slower (by quite a margin, in some cases) than
doing the same with other apps or on tivo. Clearly something is wrong.
We don't know what though.


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