[mythtv-users] Remote frontend staccato

[Joseph A. Caputo]

On Wednesday 12 May 2004 13:50, Kyle Rose wrote:
> On my desktop remote frontend connected via 100 Mbit UTP 802.3 to the
> Mythbox, everything works great.  I haven't had a problem with it in
> months.
>
> On my laptop remote frontend connected vi 802.11b to a firewall, and
> from there to the Mythbox, I get some very strange performance
> characteristics.  In particular, performance seems to get worse as I
> turn *down* the bitrate.  For the purposes of this discussion, I'm
> referring to viewing recordings, not to LiveTV.
>
> If I set the PVR to record at (say) 3000 Kbits/sec, I get audio and
> video that starts and stops about once a second, but only for a very
> short time.  I initially thought the stream was overflowing the
> rather crappy but expected 802.11b real-life limit of 4 Mbits, but
> this appears not to be the case.
>
> When I lowered the bitrate, the problem got even *worse*. 
> Ultimately, I got down to 1100 Kbits/sec, at which point the
> choppiness became completely unbearable.
>
> Is this some kind of buffer underflow situation exacerbated by the
> burstiness of 802.11b?  The processor is more than powerful enough to
> handle this (I decode and play DVD's on this laptop all the time),
> and MythTV is in fact using Xv.
>
> Any suggestions?


Sounds like you're using a hardware MPEG encoder card with the ivtv 
driver, and using a bitrate that's too low.  I don't know if it's an 
issue with the card or the driver (or both), but folks have experienced 
problems with bitrates below, oh, say 4000 kbps or so.

-JAC