[mythtv-users] Unreasonably high CPU usage when playing HD content? Suggestions?

[Sarah Hayes]

I would try grabbing a recording and using mplayer to play it back with 
the frontend off (i.e. mplayer <file>) and see if THAT works.

If it doesn't then you might find something in the mplayer output about 
which decoders it's using and figure out if something is missing.

If it does play fine then you'll need to turn logging on in the frontend 
and run through the logs to see what, if anything, it's displaying.

Is the CPU an actual, original Athlon64 or the more modern X2 version?  
If it's an AMD64 original, it's single core.  But you might get more 
grunt out of it by rebuilding it as a 64bit system if it's in 32bit 
currently, should give you around 25% more grunt.  But I've heard it 
said that HD is the land of the core 2.... so YMMV.

FWIW, my AMD64 3400, in 64bit, can't do h264 720p goes right to 100% and 
jerks.   Not got an mpeg2 HD file to test on it.