[mythtv-users] Slow myth TV user interface on a fast machine

[Paul Mason]

I have this problem too. Not sure how 'fast' my machine is (athlon 64 3800,
single core) but the menus are definitely slow:

from choosing "Watch Recordings" to actually having the Watch Recordings
screen fully drawn - 3-4s
from program group to individual program list - 1-2s
scrolling up or down an item in the list - 1-2s
from choosing Delete to the Are you sure? dialog being fully displayed -
3-4s (I get the empty box after 2s then the words)

That's pretty consistent regardless of what I've been doing i.e. I don't
have Todd's problem where it's only slow after playback. It's also annoying
because the remote is more responsive than the UI, so for example I often
hit right to go from the program group to program list  and end up in the
program menu for the first program in the list (i.e. right x2) because I'm
sub-consciously holding down the remote button until I see the screen
change.

My graphics card is an on-board NVidia 6150 LE. It wasn't my first choice,
when I bought the machine it had a more powerful ATI card which I could
never get fully working with the Linux drivers. I gave up, sold it on ebay
and switched to the onboard card. Which, using the 'nv' driver has been
fine. It'll play full-screen video at 1280x768 (which is the highest
resolution my TV with do) smoothly. Since I'm using it for SD (Freeview in
the UK) that's more than I need.

I've tried and failed to get the nividia driver to work properly. Inspired
by recent messages here I tried again this weekend, spent a total of about
10 hours on it, googling, searching the wiki, various forums, tried several
"this worked for me" solutions but I always have tearing when playing back
video. The menus sure are zippy and responsive though.

So to sum up - the choice for me is between fast menus and video tearing
with the nvidia driver, and sluggish menus and perfect video with nv - so
I'm back to the nv driver.

I find this extremely odd, that drawing a dialog box with text in it
requires hardware acceleration but playing video is fine. There's probably a
good reason why it's not that simple but that's the high-level view.

A further point - my laptop which I sometimes use as a frontend has a
GeForce Go 7600 and that works flawlessly with the nvidia driver. Zippy
menus and smooth video. Which got me wondering - if I bought a better
graphics card is there a chance it'll work, or might it be related to the
software and other hardware?  I kind of resent spending money when my
current card is clearly capable of what I need, but then compared to hours
of my free time maybe it's worth it.

The other thing I might do is have a delve in the code. I'm not a C++
programmer but maybe I can figure something out. Maybe have some kind of
alternate simpler interface for the Watch Recordings screen. What do you
think?

-- 
Paul Mason
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