[mythtv-users] poor performance of Windows frontend

[Eric Sharkey]

I've picked up a small laptop for my son which runs Windows.  I'd like
to have him be able to run the MythTV frontend on it.  I've installed
it and I can connect to the backend, but the video performance is
unwatchably bad.  I'm a bit out of my element on Windows, so I thought
I'd ask if anyone has any tuning advice.

The hardware should be up to the task.  It's a dual core Pentium U4100
at 1.3 GHz with 32-bit Windows 7, 2GB of RAM, and integrated graphics
(Intel).  It's not a high performance system, but this should be able
to handle at least SD content without any problem.  I'm about to
download a 30 minute SD program from mythweb in about 4 minutes, so
the wireless network bandwidth is there.  I can play the downloaded
file in Windows Media Player and it plays ok.  But when I try to play
the same recording from the frontend, it looks as if the video was
scaled down to 320x240 and then reexpanded.  The video plays
momentarily (2-3 seconds), then pauses (~1 second), then plays another
couple of seconds, and pauses, etc.  I even tried connecting the wired
network (gigabit ethernet) and it didn't make any difference.
Changing the CPU playback profile in settings also doesn't seem to
make any difference.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Eric