[mythtv-users] Freevo, Tivo & MythTV

[Tom Lichti]

Marco Nelissen wrote:
> Second, since the hardware is perfectly capable of doing fast channel
> changes (other apps do it with this same hardware), I very much doubt
> hardware is the problem.
>   
When you say other apps can change channels quickly, I have seen you 
mention mplayer and/or xawtv (may have been someone else mentioning 
xawtv, I just read all 60 or so messages). Do those other apps record to 
disk, then play the buffered file, or are they just streaming data from 
the card? If the latter, then I say you are comparing apples to oranges. 
Of course myth could change channels quickly, if it didn't buffer 
anything to disk, it would only be limited by how long the tuner takes 
to switch channels, which isn't very long. It's just not the way myth 
works. Of course a Tivo can do it fast because it is a finely tuned 
combination of custom hardware and software, that has likely had many 
many man-hours (months?) of development and testing. I don't think it's 
fair to compare mythtv to tivo either, for just that reason.

As you mentioned, there are many things involved in switching the 
channel, a quarter second here, half second there. Until each one of 
those 'things' is finely tuned to be as quick as it can, it won't get 
any better. I don't think there is a 'magic bullet' that is going to 
make myth all of a sudden start changing channels lightning quick.

I really don't care what happens, frankly, because I can't stand to 
watch live tv (no timestretch, no commercial skip) so it doesn't affect 
me at all. Just thought I'd stick my 2 cents in... :)

Tom