[mythtv-users] Netflix under MythTV

[Greg Oliver]

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 5:56 PM, Allen Edwards
<allen.p.edwards at gmail.com> wrote:
> Has anyone gotten Netflix streaming under MythTV using any Virutal
> machine and had it run with less than 100% CPU?  I have tried
> everything I can think of.  I have searched the web and all I can find
> is more people with the same problem I have, no solutions.  So, if you
> are doing this please let me know what virtual machine suite you are
> using and what the settings are.  Assuming there was some trick to get
> it working, what was it?
>
> I am firing off a Windows XP session with one of the MythTV buttons,
> that starts firefox on the Netflix web site where I can select the
> movie to stream.  It is a slick setup except that the video is jerky
> as you would expect when the CPU is running 100%.  Without the movie,
> the CPU is at just a few percent.  My machine is a AMD 5400+ with 2G
> ram. Virtual Box is set to 1024M main memory and 32M video memory.
> Guest Apps are installed and I just installed DirectX but it didn't
> help at all.  My network is running 5MB downstream rate in the virtual
> machine.  The network is not stressed, the CPU usage is the problem.
> Monitor is 720x1280 digital.

In my experience with vbox, 2GB for host and guest is no where near
enough to do anything - especially with video...  I had to put 8gb in
my laptop just to get vista to be responsive enough for my liking..
Using 2gb/2gb for ir was too painful.  I have an XP virtual machine
that is pretty responsive with 1.5gb though.

I have found the experimental direct display support stuff to still be
pretty crappy though.  I am on an ATI host video card though, so that
may make a difference..

Also, I found that using 2 interfaces - 1 NAT and 1 Host only is far
better than  1 bridged..  NAT gets to the networks, and hostonly is
far better throughput than bridged or NAT for moving files between
host and guest..  If you have not tried that, I would start there..

-Greg