[mythtv-users] Myth on WD HDTV Media Player for $99

[Andrew Gallatin]

Brian Wood [beww at beww.org] wrote:
> On Monday 12 October 2009 08:12:20 Andrew Gallatin wrote:
> > Brian Wood [beww at beww.org] wrote:
> > > There have also been posts about video files that can be played
> > > flawlessly by a Sigma-based machine that Myth barfs on. I'm not saying
> > > this is Myth's fault, or VDPAU's, or nVidia's, or anyone else's, just
> > > pointing out that some people are having this sort of problem.
> >
> > I'm one of these people.  I bought an ION a few months ago, and it
> > works great, except that Myth (with or without VDPAU)and XBMC,
> > mplayer, etc barf on about 1/2 my HD recordings due to my local
> > broadcasters using advanced MPEG2 telecine settings on their encoders.
> > The same files play just fine on ION in 7MC, and also on a Sigma
> > device.  I just wish I could get somebody interested in fixing it...
> 
> Hmmm, maybe you should move to my neck of the woods, where the local 
> broadcaster (note the singular) can't afford an encoder with the fancy 
> telecine features:-)

I wish.  Though I suppose most of the Myth devs must already live
there. :(

My problem is described in this thread:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/319838 However,
asking the broadcasters to change their encoder settings is not really
an option, as most of them here are doing that now.

> I think we all know that Myth's player is not perfect, but perhaps that's the 
> price we pay for some of its nice features (commercial skip comes to mind). 

The only way I've found to get both smooth playback AND commercial
skip is SageTV.  Their Sigma based front ends communicate with the
SageTV back end, and you get the full SageTV UI, including things
like commercial skipping.  The problem is that the UI is sluggish,
fugly, and missing MythTV features like timestretch that I find
it hard to live without.


> The problem is probably not just with Myth, but with some of the underlying 
> software it depends on.

Since the only software I've ever encountered which plays things 
correctly is Media Center, then yes, I agree.

> The Sigma chips have many years of commercial development behind them, and 
> none of us expect that the Myth devs would agree to an NDA and do whatever 
> might be required to utilize them.
> 
> I don't think its a case of a lack of interest, anyone reading your post would 
> fix it in an instant, if they could. The fact that the problems effect only a 
> small number of users is going to effect the priority, that's just the way it 
> is.
> 
> I think it's a case of the last 1% requiring 99% of the work.

I'm not sure its quite that much, but I agree in general.  I'd be
willing to offer a bounty if that could get a dev interested.
I've already sunk $300 in a system that's just gathering dust.

> I've wondered if there might be a way for a Myth system to simply appear as a 
> UPnP server, playable with Sigma-based devices, and the output of Myth's 
> frontend would simply appear to be one long continuous file to the playback 
> device.
>
> The Broadcom device might solve at least some of your problems, only time will 
> tell on that one.

I certainly hope so!

> Though it would be a pain, can you transcode the "bad" files to somehting oyu 
> can use?

No. I haven't found anything that will produce a
smoothly playing file.  I even tried some of the "commercial"
products on Windows.  Since they are mainly just wrappers around
ffmpeg, it is not surprising that they don't produce a smoothly
playing transcode.



Drew