[mythtv-users] MythTV vs XBMC

[Travis Tabbal]

I'm a bit bemused at this idea that RPi can't use "commonly available
consumer video formats"....

IMO, there are only a few that matter..

HD: h264, MPEG2, VC-1
SD: MPEG2, Xvid

A few minor variants, but really, how many do you use?

The Pi doesn't do MPEG2/VC-1 out of the box, you need a CODEC license for
about $5 to do it. h264 is near flawless. CPU decode for XVid works fine at
SD resolution, which is all I have in that format anyway. I can play
1080p at 30Mbps BD rips fine. I did need to OC for software AC3/DTS conversion
to stereo, but that might be solved now. UI is a bit slower than the old FE
machines I used to use. But those needed massive heatsinks and/or fans to
work at all. The Pi is silent, cheap, and easy to set up.

The UI is slower than the bigger boxes I used to run, but it's still
perfectly usable. Even with all shows and metadata on the network, over the
somewhat slow 100M ethernet link.

The only complaint I have is that recorded TV from my HDHR isn't quite as
high quality, due to deinterlacers not being as good. It's acceptable
though, and anything I want to keep I just run through a transcoder to do
more accurate deinterlacing anyway. Channels that use 720p rather than
1080i are great though.

And I can bring another TV into the system for ~$50 (RPi, case, PSU, IR
receiver). It can't run MythFE, but most of our needs are covered by XBMC.
I use MythBE for recording, and MythicalLibrarian to export recordings over
to the XBMC shares along with metadata, so they act just like archived
shows. I do recording rules via MythWeb, and I don't do LiveTV, but there
are ways to do that if I wanted to. I set it up on an older configuration,
but we ended up not using it, so I didn't bother when I upgraded everything
a while back.

It also has a few really nice Android remote control apps, and a full blown
XBMC app. By copying a few files from one of the Pi devices, the Android
version even accesses the shared database, metadata, etc..



On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 11:14 AM, jedi <jedi at mishnet.org> wrote:

> On Thu, May 08, 2014 at 10:03:46AM -0700, Thomas Mashos wrote:
> > On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 10:01 AM, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com>
> wrote:
> > > On 5/8/2014 8:14 AM, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On Thu, 2014-05-08 at 08:10 -0400, Greg Thompson wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> I believe XBMC looks the same everywhere since they decided to use
> All
> > >>> OpenGL for their interface, rather than QT and a window manager...
> > >>
> > >> And so yes, MythFE could copy that and shed baggage, etc., but again
> > >>
> > >> with the shoulders of giants.
> > >
> > >
> > > Every time that is suggested in earnest, it is met with all kinds of
> push
> > > back from users wanting to run on low end machines that don't have the
> GPU
> > > necessary to run OpenGL only.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> >
> > It's 2014. At some point these "low end machines" should be able to
> > run OpenGL right? I mean, are there lots of users that run MythTV on a
> > PIII?
>
>     I am waiting with great anticipation for these ARM based machines to
> become more capable than my ION1 hardware. I have quite literally gone
> through 3 generations of ARM based streamers so far and I don't really see
> any end in sight.
>
>     That's the minimium bar that ARM hardware has to reach in order to be
> able to deal with the commonly available consumer video formats.
>
> [deletia]
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>
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