[mythtv] How would one speed up the channel changing in mythtv ?

Robin Neatherway robthebob at gmail.com
Sun Oct 19 09:17:08 UTC 2008


On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 8:46 PM, Linuxguy123 <linuxguy123 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm thinking of using mythtv as the base for my HTPC FTA satellite
> receiver.   I've never used mythtv, but I understand its optimized for
> PVR functions more than surfing and viewing live TV and as such the
> channel changing time is a bit long.
>
> I'm a software developer.   I'm coming from a world of FTA receivers
> that change channels in about 1 second.
>
> How much work would it be to modify mythtv so that it changed channels
> faster ?
>
> I understand that the mythtv backend buffers about 5 seconds of the
> stream before it forwards it to the front end.  Is this the main reason
> for the longer channel change times ?

I believe that it is many factors combined that cause this apparently
slow behaviour. Rather than attempting to optimize this multi-step
process and probably ending up with something that is still slower
than you would like, what about the following:

* When entering live TV, or switching to a new channel, send the
stream to the frontend immediately at the same time as saving it to
disk, rather than saving it and then playing back from the file.
* When any timeshifting activity is invoked, such as Pause or Rewind,
only then switch to the file that has been recording all along, and
return to the standard behaviour.

I think that this would eliminate one of the (hopefully larger) bottlenecks.

Robin


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