[mythtv-users] Linux sucks -- so thinking of virtualizing MythTV

Marc Barrett mnealbarrett at cox.net
Sat Jan 12 19:02:39 UTC 2008


I am getting sick and tired of the inability to play h.264 1080p
videos under Linux without pausing and stuttering, while the 
same system can play them under Windows flawlessly. 
Basically, you need a really fast system to play 1080p videos
under Linux, while a much slower system, along with a moderate
video card such as an nvidia 6200 and a PureVideo player,
will do the job nicely under Windows.  This is the exact opposite
of the way things are supposed to be traditionally.

So, what I am planning to do is get an HDHomeRun and 
virtualize the MythTV installation under Windows.  That way I
could have the recordings saved to a shared partition, and 
play them with Windows Media Player or some other player
that supports PureVideo.  This will obviously have problems
in terms of speed, so I need ideas for options here.

One idea I am exploring to speed things up a bit is to use
a SQL database running natively under Windows to speed
things up a bit, so the SQL doesn't have to run under the
virtualization. 

I am also exploring what virtualization to use.  My system is
an old 2.6Ghz Pentium 4 system, so it does not have the
hardware virtualization stuff that the newer Intel and AMD 
processors have.  I'd like to use the fastest 
virtualizor available, but I don't know which one.  I've read
good things about Parallels, but there is also colinux, which
I've used in the past and which isn't bad despite the lack of 
attention that it gets.

Of course, all this wouldn't be needed if Linux could play 
HD content on older systems as well as Windows, but 
somehow I don't see that happening.



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