HD Playback Reports

Playback of HD content - User Reports

This page is for playback reports regarding High Definition Content. This page will serve as a resource for users in selecting hardware for their MythTV systems.

How to produce information for this page

Paste the following into a file (eg, hdplayback.sh), chmod +x the file, and run it on a file known to play back perfectly on a given system (eg, ./hdplayback.sh moviefile.mkv). It will produce an output file called hdreport.txt. hdreport.txt is in wiki format. Edit this page, find the most suitable position in the table to place the data (by CPU spec), and paste the output there. Edit the "Comments" section to share any special command line needed to get the program to play smoothly.

This script requires mplayer to run properly.

#!/bin/sh
#
# Script to generate wiki formatted HD Playback report.  Only
# run this on files that play back smoothly!
#

CPUNAME=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "model name" | sed -e 's/model name\t: //' | head -n 1 | sed -e 's/\t/ /'`
CPUMHZ=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "cpu MHz" | sed -e 's/cpu MHz//' | sed 's/ *//g' | sed 's/\t*://' | head -n 1`
MEMTOTAL=`cat /proc/meminfo |grep MemTotal | sed 's/MemTotal//' | sed 's/ *//g' | sed 's/\t*://' | head -n 1`
KERNEL=`uname -r`
COMMENTS="No Comments."
WIDTH=`mplayer -ao null -vo null -frames 0 -identify $1 2>/dev/null | grep "ID_VIDEO_WIDTH" | sed -e 's/ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=//'`
HEIGHT=`mplayer -ao null -vo null -frames 0 -identify $1 2> /dev/null | grep "ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT" | sed -e 's/ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=//'`
RESOLUTION="$WIDTH x $HEIGHT"
FORMAT=`mplayer -ao null -vo null -frames 0 -identify $1 2>/dev/null | grep "ID_VIDEO_CODEC" | sed -e 's/ID_VIDEO_CODEC=//'`
BITRATE=`mplayer -ao null -vo null -frames 0 -identify $1 2>/dev/null | grep "ID_VIDEO_BITRATE" | sed -e 's/ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=//'`

echo "|-" >> hdreport.txt
echo "| $CPUNAME || $CPUMHZ MHz || $MEMTOTAL || $KERNEL || $FORMAT || $RESOLUTION || $BITRATE || $COMMENTS" >> hdreport.txt
echo "|-" >> hdreport.txt
echo "Output saved in file hdreport.txt.  Paste the contents at http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php?title=HD_Playback_Reports"

Occasionally this code will return a "0" for bitrate. When this happens, view the bitrate manually by running "ffmpeg -i filename" on the file, and looking for a line like:

Duration: 01:56:32.5, start: 20523.753856, bitrate: 22580 kb/s

In this case, the bitrate is 22580 kb/s.

User Reported Data

Processor Type	Processor Speed	Memory Total	Kernel	Video Codec	Resolution	Bitrate	Comments
Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz	1600.000 MHz	4050584kB	2.6.22-14-generic	ffvc1	1920 x 1080	22580 kb/s	HD-DVD Rip of "300." MLP Audio track played with patched mplayer.