[mythtv-users] MVPMC

[Nick Craig-Wood]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 09:01:29AM +0000, Mike Richardson wrote:
> > > at the start of the watching session and 
> > > 
> > > WriteBlock zerocnt timeout
> > 
> > Doesn't sound so good though!
> 
> No. Curiously it is channel dependent. Recordings from channels such as BBC1
> don't suffer from the problem but C4, five, E4, E4+1 all suffer very badly. 

I wonder if that is due to errors in the streams? From Crystal Palace
at least those channels are sent in QAM64 rather than QAM16 IIRC which
is much more error prone.  Possibly the transmission power for the
multiplex is lower.  Anyway the result is that I get a *lot* more
errors on those channels, "five" in particular.  Perhaps the mythtv
protocol deals less gracefully with errors in the Mpeg stream? I would
have thought it would just be pumping bytes, but maybe it is
interpreting them somehow?

You can check the error rates using tzap.  I get just less than 0x1000
per second on five normally (which is the channel I use to see how
well my aerial is working!)  If you are getting more than that then
you've got a problem.

I have a different channel dependent problem... I can use the skip
buttons to skip through C4, "five" programs and it works perfectly.
However if I skip through BBC1/2 channels more than a few times then
mvpmc locks up.

> > Do you use -r /nfs/path/to/mythtv/recordings or use the filebrowser to
> > play the recordings.  The former (which I use) gives the program info
> > on the screen which is what I presume you mean by the on-screen
> > graphics, but plays the files via NFS.  Its works well here!
> 
> The on-screen graphics I mean are the ones shown whilst fast forwarding and
> pausing (percentage through program, program length, recording time, program
> details etc). Using the mythtv protocol they are there, using NFS they
> aren't - which makes sense. 

I have to say I've never tried the Mythtv protocol - I went straight
to NFS with -r because I'm still running a much older version of
MythTV (it ain't broke etc ;-)

With -r, when I press OK I see a bar with time and progress through
the program, recording time, program details etc.  It doesn't come up
unless I press OK though (not while fast forwarding).

BTW I'm using the latest nightly build from
ftp://buoy.com/pub/mvpmc/www.lison.com/mvpmc/ rather than the last
release.

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick