[mythtv-users] Native Mythtv vs XBMC / Upnp / iphone / Other

Brad DerManouelian myth at dermanouelian.com
Thu Oct 9 13:43:47 UTC 2008


On Oct 9, 2008, at 4:41 AM, Adam Skinner wrote:

> There has been some discussion recently on the list about the merits  
> of
> using something with a 'nicer' UI - ala XBMC. Whilst I wont go into  
> that
> debate, another issue may cause you to reconsider.
>
> I live in a fringe reception area of DVB-T in the UK. Most of the time
> my reception is pretty good , but often there are bad spikes lasting  
> for
> a few seconds.
>
> Using Native mythtv frontend, the audio and video stay in sync 99% of
> the time.At a guess, I expect this has something to do with the
> recordedseek database table and better mythtv video playing.
>
> Using XBMC  / PS3 with UPNP / iPhone transcoded recordings - a little
> bit of reception problems makes the audio and video out of sync or the
> file stops playing.
>
> Seeking in general is far better with native mythfrontend.

When you rely on the information in the video alone to seek and there  
are corrupt frames (as far as I can tell) it's mostly guesswork to set  
it right. Myth keeps information in the seektable as its recording to  
help it know exactly where you are in the video. That's part of the  
luxury of having the same software record and play back.

I don't transcode videos (except to watch on my iPhone once in a while  
and it's all video from my Satellite so I rarely get broken frames) so  
I don't know exactly how it works, but I suppose it would be better if  
the transcoder used the seektable information when running into broken  
frames. I don't know if that currently happens or if that's even  
feasible since it's so specific to the project.

-Brad



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