[mythtv-users] LiveTV Channel Browsing Speed (New angle !)

[Brad DerManouelian]

On Mar 24, 2008, at 7:18 AM, bungle wrote:

> Brad DerManouelian-2 wrote:
>>
>> The reason mythtv doesn't allow watching LiveTV without buffering is
>> because plenty of other things already do that so why reinvent the
>> wheel?
>>
>
> I'm sure that before MythDVD was around no one said "There are  
> plenty of
> other apps that can play DVDs, so why reinvent the wheel?"  I think  
> you are
> missing my point.  Your comment about "waiting for a patch" is  
> perfectly
> valid.  That seems to be the answer to most feature requests that no  
> devs
> are interested in.  For this question the answer seems to be more  
> along the
> lines of "we don't think that's how you should use MythTV", which is  
> totally
> different.  Maybe it's just because everyone is sick of it getting  
> asked,
> but is that the stance people should take?  I'm not asking because  
> this is a
> super-important feature for me, just because I don't understand the  
> *kind*
> of rejection it is getting.

Maybe the reason is the part of my post that you cut out. The fact  
that the way MythTV /used to work/ is that if you were watching LiveTV  
and hit record, it would record from that moment forward. So many  
people complained that finally LiveTV was rewritten to allow hitting  
record and getting the entire program from the point you started  
watching it. Everyone rejoiced - and then complained LiveTV channel  
changes are taking too long. So now you're suggesting going back to  
the old functionality that everyone complained about.

I promise you that at least several people have looked deep into the  
issue. Tracking each network call, tracking ivtv response time,  
insisting they could get livetv to change channels faster. No one has  
even come back after researching saying, "I found the problem" and I'm  
guessing because there is no problem in mythtv that makes channel  
changes slow. I have a combined frontend/backend and it changes in  
about 1.5-2 seconds for me which is almost exactly the same amount of  
time as changing it on my DirecTV box without MythTV installed. When I  
had a distributed system (backend in the basement/frontend in the  
livingroom) channel changes took about 3-4 seconds.

So why do I have acceptable channel changes? Maybe I have a super fast  
processor. Maybe it's my gigabit network. Maybe it's the fact that my  
frontend and backend are combined. Maybe it's a combination. Certainly  
none of these things can be improved by software changes in MythTV.

Bottom line is that no one is saying, "Don't change LiveTV channel  
change time". We're saying, "Devs did the best they could. Other  
people have attempted to improve it and no one ever has." If you can / 
without taking away any current functionality/ please do! No one would  
reject an improvement to MythTV - ever! However, I am relatively  
positive you would just be wasting your time, but that's ok too. It's  
your time.

-Brad