[mythtv-users] Strange playback issues

[Sabin Dang]

Hello all,

I know my problem isn't due to mythtv at all, but something with my 
setup... I'm hoping that someone out there might be able to help me out 
anyway!

Currently I've got my mythbox / personal file server setup with a 
single 80 gb drive for OS and live tv, and a 360 gb hardware raid 5 for 
archived video and storage.

When I play back a transcoded video from my 80 gb standalone drive it 
plays back perfectly, no problems at all. When I play back the same 
exact file (or any other file for that matter) there will be occasional 
jitters / pauses in the playback. They are infrequent, but frequent 
enough to be very annoying (approx once ever 1.5 min).

I've verified that my raid can read the data fast enough by doing a: 
time cat <file> > /dev/null.  I've consistently been getting very fast 
read times, so I'm pretty sure that isn't the problem.

I checked my IRQs and saw that my raid board was sharing an IRQ with my 
sound card, and thought maybe this had something to do with it. So I 
switched things around and have the RAID card on its on IRQ, and still 
having the same problem.

I've played these video files outside of mythtv using mplayer and 
gotten the same result (jitter from raid, no jitter from 80 gb drive). 
Also network play works just fine. If anyone has any suggestions as to 
what my be causing this problem please let me know!

My System Details:
Athlon 2500+ XP
512 MB Ram
1 80 GB 7200 RPM drive for OS / Live TV
4 120 GB 7200 RPM drives in raid 5 for archive
NVidia GeForce FX 5200 64 mb ram
MSI KT4V motherboard
LSI Megaraid IDE controller
PVR-250

Thanks in advance for your help!

-- Sabin