[mythtv-users] Poor playback performance on Mac mini

[Jason Gillis]

On Mar 10, 2012, at 6:23 PM, James Linder wrote:
> 
> Since the issue has plagued me too some feedback ...
> I've not run a frontend on my mini
> NVIDIA playback is instantly noticeably better than ATI (I even installed SuSE and ubuntu on my iMac, but heat generation, even throttled to 1G is too much, and did the A/B comparison with various frontends)
> You too have the 50Hz vs 60Hz for all US based movies jitter issue.
> So native 50Hz video is acceptable on ATI, but 60Hz is very jerky.
> If, perchance, you watched 50Hz stuff on BBC and 60Hz stuff on ITV then you could understand.
> Mac use SLEEP at full speed not THROTTLING to manage heat.
> 
> I've found that a smaller display is the only solution. I wait with bated breath to hear anybody's wisdom


I run my frontend from a previous generation mini (2009?).  I don't use OSX as the OS, though.  I installed mythbuntu so that I could get access to the VDPAU functionality in the GPU (9400M) through the linux drivers.  I don't have any problems with video playback, unless it's a very strange video file.  TV recorded from HDHR or HDPVR both work just fine.  If possible, I'd suggest using linux as the OS for the frontend on the mini, if possible.  I would guess that the experience would be better.

I have a 2010 model mini that runs OSX, but it runs only the backend (and that's a VM).  I haven't tried running the frontend on that.  My other mac is a mackintosh which has a Core-i7, which wouldn't be an apples-to-apples comparison.  (It does quite well with playback on the osx frontend…)

The last I remember, which is quite a while ago, the OSX frontend didn't have access to the video acceleration APIs, so playback wasn't as good.  I'm not sure if that has changed, though.

Jason

 
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