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

Andrew Lyon andrew.lyon at gmail.com
Mon Oct 20 15:01:18 UTC 2008


On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Robin Neatherway <robthebob at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

My parents have a topuptv pvr box from argos that works exactly like
that, changing channels is very quick but as soon as you pause or
rewind there is a delay, the video starts playing again for a couple
of seconds, and then it pauses or rewinds.

I like it.

Andy

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