[mythtv-users] Playback of HDTV MPEG recordings on Mac OS

[Chase Douglas]

On Apr 12, 2009, at 2:58 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
> On Sunday 12 April 2009 12:48:19 Seth Heckard wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have somewhat of an off-topic question, but I figure this is as  
>> good
>> of a place to ask as any.
>>
>> I have an Air2PC card that I use with MythTV to record my TV  
>> shows.  I
>> travel a lot and copy the MPEG files from the MythTV computer to my
>> laptop, a MacBook Pro (late 2008 edition).  It may not be the most
>> elegant solution, but it enables me to catch up on my recordings on
>> the road.
>>
>> However, the playback is pretty choppy using VLC.  Watching a 1080i
>> file at fullscreen, it stutters a bunch, and that's without any
>> de-interlacing or filters.  Quicktime does not recognize the MPEG
>> files as valid, which is a shame, because I believe it is hardware
>> accelerated.
>
> I think you have to get the MPEG2 codec for Quicktime if you want to  
> play such
> files with it. Last time I checked they wanted $20 or so for that.

MPEG2 is actually supported, but the MPEG-TS container format is not.  
MPEG-PS format is supported, but digitial tv is usually transmitted  
using TS streams. My hope is that when Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) comes  
out with a new QuickTime framework it will support TS streams. Until  
then, I don't think there's any way to get accelerated decoding on OS  
X, though I'm far from an expert in this area.