[mythtv-users] playback profiles... help.

[Scott Traurig]

> Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:01:35 +0000
> From: Paul Harrison <mythtv at dsl.pipex.com>
> 
> Sarah Hayes wrote:
> > Yes, I'm being an idiot and whilst I REALLY like 0.21 I'm trying to
> > understand the default playback profiles. I get what they're doing.
> >
> > The defaults seem to be: Slim, CPU+, CPU++, High Quality, CPU--,
> > Normal.   I'm assuming these are the pre-defined ones but it could be
> > something chucked in to Gentoo... if it is I'll go ask in their forums
> :)
> >
> > I'd guess High Quality is "best of the best" with all the goodies turned
> > on, but I'm having a hard time with the others, especially the ones that
> > make mention of ivtv, which I thought was for driving a PVR card?  I get
> > the resolution checking and differing rendering engines bit, I'm just
> > wonder what the intended use is and what sort of proc/speed's fit in to
> > those defaults... is a C3 a 'cpu+' or a 'cpu--' or indeed a 'slim' sort
> > of thing.
> >
> > Any one with advice welcome.
> >
> >
> > Sarah
> >
> >
> 
> There's a little info here from danielk:-
> 
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/commits/321104

Great link, Paul! This really explains the developer's thought processes.
With all due respect it appears the developers who set the defaults per the
above referenced link have made things more complex than they need to be and
in fact have made the wrong choices quality-wise. As explained in the link
it's pretty clear that the biggest differences in the default settings are
limited to the choice of deinterlacer.

Being highly critical of my encode and decode quality I have spent a lot of
time looking at this (hah, a pun! :-) Since all the deinterlacers suck
except for Bob the choice of playback settings is actually easy: make your
own custom setting either using XvMC or Standard decoder (you pick what
looks best) with Bob deinterlacing. Done.

Bob may make your OSD a little funny but what's more important: picture or
OSD quality?

I'm still experimenting with renderers for both video and OSD and my
personal jury is still out there because I am stuck with XV-blit having
trouble getting OpenGL to work right now :-/

YMMV,

Scott