[mythtv-users] Frontend Raspberry Pi setup issues

[DryHeat122 .]

To answer my own question above...I went ahead and got an MSI Cubi N-010BUS
and set it up with Xbuntu and a FE.  It does perform significantly better
than the RPi3.  This is a pretty nice setup for anyone considering building
a second FE.  The whole setup (box + 2 gb memory + 30 gb SSD) cost $198.
It has 5 ghz wifi and plenty of processing power (quad core Celeron N3160)
and it is silent.

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 7:16 AM, Peter Bennett <cats22 at comcast.net> wrote:

>
>
> On 07/26/2017 02:06 AM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>
>> Here in New Zealand, we typically get HD recordings of around 5
>> Gibytes per hour for 1080i H.264.  So that factor of 5 is quite wrong.
>> Part of that is that the HD picture quality transmitted is quite a bit
>> higher than what is transmitted on MPEG2 systems, but H.264 never
>> produces files that are 1/5 the size of MPEG2 encoded ones.
>>
> That is interesting to note. What we have here from Comcast is 1080i
> MPEG-2 for some channels and this takes anything from 3 to 8 GB per hour.
> We have also 720p H264 for other channels and that uses 1.5 to 2 GB per
> hour.
>
> But with H.264, what you have to watch out for is the peak bit rates.
>> H.264 is very variable as to how much compression it does on each
>> frame, so when you get a complete change of picture (eg a scene
>> change), you can get a very high peak bit rate for a short time.  That
>> can be too much for a WiFi connection.  MPEG2 recordings can be fixed
>> bit rate or variable bit rate, but the peak variable bit rates are not
>> as high as with H.264.  Still, they can be too much for an ordinary
>> WiFi connection.  For HD, you really need 802.11ac, not 802.11n.
>>
> In my case, all recordings from the same channel are the same size /
> bitrate. I assume the broadcast multiplex method  delivers a fixed bit rate
> for each multiplex on a frequency. I don't think a broadcast channel can
> allow higher peak rates. I have noticed that when the action in a scene
> speeds up, the quality goes down, and I assume this is because they have to
> maintain a fixed bitrate,
>
>> If you want to play an H.265 file you have downloaded, or a 1080p
>> H.264 one, then the peak bit rates are again even higher than with
>> 720p or 1080i H.264 recordings.  Let alone what is needed for 4K
>> H.265.
>>
> Note that the raspberry Pi cannot play H265 files or 4K resolution of any
> format.
>
> Peter
>
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