[mythtv-users] Mythvideo: Internal Player, mplayer or Xine which is prefered?

[Tom Dexter]

>From: "Anthony Giggins"
>
>Hey People,
>
>I recently upgraded from Mythdora 3.2 to 4.0 and have had some issues with
>Xine not playing the audio from some XVID avi's but it is working from
>others all of these are using MP3 audio at 128 bit rate. these worked fine
>in version 3.2 which used mplayer by default I believe.
>
>So this has raised the question which is prefered by everyone for
>mythvideo playback Xine, mplayer or the Internal Player? and what are the
>pros and cons of each? I've looked around the wiki and have not really
>found the information I was looking for.
>
>Thank You
>
>Anthony

I use xine for just about everything.  I have wmv files set to use mplayer, 
thought I virtually never watch them in mythtv.  I've experimented a little 
with mkv files and mplayer seems to handle some that xine won't.

I'm running mythtv 0.20.1 and I'm sure the internal player in SVN is much 
better than what I have.  xine just supports so many codecs and formats.

I know you didn't specifically ask about DVDs, but I use xine for DVDs as 
well as VIDEO_TS, iso, and img DVDs.  One big advantage of this is being 
able to use the tvtime deinterlace post processing.  When I first started 
watching DVDs in mythtv, I noticed that some DVDs had some pretty nasty 
tearing issues especially during panning no matter what player I used.  
After enabling post processing with the tvtime deinterlace plugin in xine, 
all those issues went away and my DVD playback always looks simply amazing.  
The command I have set up for DVD playback is:

xine --post tvtime -pfhq dvd:/%d

...and for the file types VIDEO_TS, iso, and img:

xine --post tvtime -pfhq dvd:/%s

Then, in my /home/mythtv/.xine/config file I have:

gui.post_plugins.deinterlace:tvtime:method=GreedyH

...which sets the deinterlace method to GreedyH and leaves all other options 
at the defaults, which apparently are:

cheap_mode=1,pulldown=0,use_progressive_frame_flag=1

The only place I've seen those options documented thoroughly is in the gui 
of gxine, which I find pretty odd.  Anyway...the DVD playback I get with 
that output at 1080i to my TV (a Hitachi RC CRT) is noticably better than 
any DVD player I've owned.

Tom

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