[mythtv-users] MythTV as a DVD player

[David Rees]

On 5/14/07, Patrick Doyle <wpdster at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to know of people's experience using MythTV as a DVD
> player (in addition to using it's many other features).  I'm asking
> because I have a friend with a MythTV box who tried playing DVD's
> through it and was unhappy with the results.  Since he already has a
> perfectly good (actually, a fairly nice) DVD player, he saw no reason
> to pursue the matter any further than, "I tried it, I wasn't happy
> with it, it didn't really matter to me."

Although most everyone who has chimed in so far seems to love Myth as
their DVD player, I must admit that I have had repeated issues with it
using 0.20. Here's a list:

1. DVD menus don't line up properly. I think this is triggered by the
fact that my screen has a 4/3 native resolution (1024x768) while it is
actually a 16/9 format. Annoying, but this doesn't affect the
functionality any.

2. Playback is not smooth. The playback speeds up and slows down over
and over. Not sure why, I'm using the Internal player. Haven't had any
luck trying to get mplayer or xine working. mplayer displays garbage
on the screen. xine I can't get to decode DVDs.

3. I've had issues with subtitles in the past which caused jerky
playback. Don't know if this is fixed now or not, haven't tried
playing a DVD with subtitles recently.

4. For some reason some DVDs just don't play in my DVD player. I don't
think I can fault MythTV for this, the DVD player itself generates IO
errors when this happens. But the same DVDs play just fine in my PS2
and in other DVD players. Linux reports it as a "LITE-ON DVDRW
SHM-165H6S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive" according to the boot pu message.

Myth DVD playback has been unreliable enough for me that I don't
bother to use it most of the time and just use the PS2 for playback.

-Dave