[mythtv-users] long delays responding to keystrokes and ir events

[Michael T. Dean]

On 12/31/2008 01:42 PM, Darren Hart wrote:
> I've built a new HD myth system using an HDHomeRun tuner.  I notice
> that after I start playing a video, a few seconds in Myth will stop
> responding to keystrokes and IR events, it will ignore them for
> upwards of a minute and then process them all at once (often escaping
> all the way out to the "Really quit myth" screen b/c I pushed Esc so
> many times :-).  After this happens once, it tends to go away for a
> while and I can use the keyboard and/or remote just fine.  I first
> thought this might be a lirc issue, but I changed from the audio_alsa
> driver hack I was using to the udp driver for the hdhomerun and
> recently noticed Myth even ignores the keyboard, not just the remote.
>
> I'm running Myth 0.21 on Ubuntu Intrepid on a dual core AMD 4400 (2+
> GHz) with 2 GB of RAM.  Recordings are on an esata drive, which
> sometimes takes a few seconds to spin up, but playback is smooth.
> While playing back HD streams I notice that the top show 150% total
> CPU usage (out of 200% given two CPUs) - Nvidia 8200 so no XvMC...
> can't wait for VDPAU!.  I tried running lirc as a SCHED_FIFO 50
> process, but that doesn't help (which isn't surprising now that I know
> the keyboard is also ignored).  So is there posisbly some problem with
> Myth not processing its event loop? (assuming it has such a thing :-)
>
> Any suggestions on what I might do to understand this and fix it would
> be much appreciated. WAF--

I'm thinking you just need to upgrade to MythTV 0.21-fixes r19222 or 
higher.  IIRC, there is/was an issue with the US repo that has prevented 
the weekly builds from going up since the issue that's most likely 
causing the problem was fixed.  So, my recommendation is to check with:

mythbackend --version

and if it doesn't say something like:

Please include all output in bug reports.
MythTV Version   : 19222
MythTV Branch    : branches/release-0-21-fixes
Library API      : 0.21.20080304-1
Network Protocol : 40
Options compiled in:
 linux release using_oss using_alsa using_jack using_backend using_dbox2 
using_dvb using_firewire using_frontend using_hdhomerun using_iptv 
using_ivtv using_joystick_menu using_lirc using_opengl_vsync 
using_opengl_video using_v4l using_x11 using_xrandr using_xv using_xvmc 
using_xvmc_opengl using_bindings_perl using_bindings_python using_opengl 
using_ffmpeg_threads using_libavc_5_3 using_live using_xvmc_pbuffer

where "MythTV Version: 19222" (or higher than 19222) is the important 
part, head over to the MythBuntu forums or #ubuntu-mythtv on freenode to 
ask for help in getting the newer version (as I think the updates are 
going to other repos).

Mike