[mythtv-users] Ubuntu Media Center team dumping MythTV for Elisa (yuck!)

[David Brodbeck]

On May 15, 2007, at 9:56 PM, Brian J. Murrell wrote:

> On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 00:38 -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>>
>> Sounds like someone needs to fix his MythTV installation.
>
> Sure.  Tell me what's broken that everything works except that seeking
> just say, a single "ffwd" or "rew" can take many seconds to process.
> I'll pass along your fix to the Ubuntu packaging team.
>
> How about the "smearing" that non-mpeg2 and nuv files do when you seek
> in them?  Do you think that is my "broken" installation?

I wonder if this is codec-related?  I don't run into that problem.  I  
do, however, find that in many non-MPEG2 files mplayer cannot seek AT  
ALL but MythTV can.  I don't know why, but it's one reason I prefer  
MythTV's internal player.

If you like mplayer better, though, you can always tell MythTV to use  
that.

> How capable DirectFB is at it is actually quite a red-herring.  It
> doesn't make it any less wrong to use something as heavy as X for what
> is relatively simple (in contrast to what X11 provides) video display
> requirements.  It's like driving a thumbtack with a sledgehammer.

As I understand it, it's the "when all you have is a hammer,  
everything starts to look like a nail" problem.  The only environment  
that drivers with good MPEG video acceleration is written for is X,  
and video acceleration is essential for playing HDTV.  (Last I looked  
DirectFB was essentially non-accelerated; you can correct me if  
that's changed.)  The CPU just can't push pixels fast enough at those  
kinds of resolutions.  In some cases the bus bandwidth isn't even up  
to it.

Arguing Myth should use DirectFB is a bit like arguing that games  
should be written to run under MS-DOS because Windows is too heavy.   
There's a grain of truth to it, but the hardware compatibility and  
driver interfaces provided by the extra layers are useful enough to  
make the point moot.