Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Users

A quick look at Mythbuntu 8.10

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colin.mc151 at gmail

Nov 3, 2008, 11:34 AM

Post #1 of 5 (1688 views)
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A quick look at Mythbuntu 8.10

I had a quick look at Mythbuntu 8.10 yesterday, and overall I liked
what I saw, but ...

For background I am currently running Knoppmyth, and I am somewhat
concerned by the sluggish update cycle, and I am somewhat interested
to see if the grass really is greener on the other side. So, after
shutting down my Knoppmyth box yesterday I disconnected my 500 GB SATA
drive and connected a 40 GB EIDE drive. Then I ran the Mythbuntu disk.

There was an issue at the first boot with the machine not detecting my
pcHDTV-5500 tuner card. This card was detected after I installed
updates and rebooted.

After the install everything was a bit nicer / slicker than I was used
to on Knoppmyth. I like the concept of the easily done incremental
upgrades. Two things have given me pause though. In the small, near
trivial was the screen save is on by default (which I don't want). Far
more serious was watching OTA HDTV, which would stutter every few
seconds, something I find unacceptable.

Are there any obvious / easy performance tweaks I should be looking at
with Mythbuntu? I have installed the proprietary nVidia drivers (which
I assumed would be a real help...). The box is an Athlon 64 3200+ with
1.5 GB of RAM, an nVidia 7200 PCIExpress card and three tuner cards
(the pcHDTV-5500, a PVR-150 and a PVR-350).

Thanks.

Colin McGregor
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myth at dermanouelian

Nov 3, 2008, 11:51 AM

Post #2 of 5 (1650 views)
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Re: A quick look at Mythbuntu 8.10 [In reply to]

On Nov 3, 2008, at 11:34 AM, Colin McGregor wrote:

> After the install everything was a bit nicer / slicker than I was used
> to on Knoppmyth. I like the concept of the easily done incremental
> upgrades. Two things have given me pause though. In the small, near
> trivial was the screen save is on by default (which I don't want). Far
> more serious was watching OTA HDTV, which would stutter every few
> seconds, something I find unacceptable.
>
> Are there any obvious / easy performance tweaks I should be looking at
> with Mythbuntu? I have installed the proprietary nVidia drivers (which
> I assumed would be a real help...). The box is an Athlon 64 3200+ with
> 1.5 GB of RAM, an nVidia 7200 PCIExpress card and three tuner cards
> (the pcHDTV-5500, a PVR-150 and a PVR-350).

Change your playback profile settings in mythfrontend. Try each of the
defaults to see which is best, then tweak for your specific needs if
required.

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james at ultratans

Nov 3, 2008, 11:51 AM

Post #3 of 5 (1647 views)
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Re: A quick look at Mythbuntu 8.10 [In reply to]

On Mon, 2008-11-03 at 14:34 -0500, Colin McGregor wrote:
> I had a quick look at Mythbuntu 8.10 yesterday, and overall I liked
> what I saw, but ...
>
> For background I am currently running Knoppmyth, and I am somewhat
> concerned by the sluggish update cycle, and I am somewhat interested
> to see if the grass really is greener on the other side. So, after
> shutting down my Knoppmyth box yesterday I disconnected my 500 GB SATA
> drive and connected a 40 GB EIDE drive. Then I ran the Mythbuntu disk.
>
> There was an issue at the first boot with the machine not detecting my
> pcHDTV-5500 tuner card. This card was detected after I installed
> updates and rebooted.
>
> After the install everything was a bit nicer / slicker than I was used
> to on Knoppmyth. I like the concept of the easily done incremental
> upgrades. Two things have given me pause though. In the small, near
> trivial was the screen save is on by default (which I don't want). Far
> more serious was watching OTA HDTV, which would stutter every few
> seconds, something I find unacceptable.
>
> Are there any obvious / easy performance tweaks I should be looking at
> with Mythbuntu? I have installed the proprietary nVidia drivers (which
> I assumed would be a real help...). The box is an Athlon 64 3200+ with
> 1.5 GB of RAM, an nVidia 7200 PCIExpress card and three tuner cards
> (the pcHDTV-5500, a PVR-150 and a PVR-350).
>
> Thanks.
>
> Colin McGregor

Did you look at top during OTA HD playback? I am using Mythbuntu 8.10 on
two machines (Athlon 64x2 5000+, 2.6 GHz and Geforce 8400gs cards) and
they easily handle HD mpeg2. If I watch with top (or htop) I see that
mythfrontend consumes about 60% and X about 15% so there is room to
spare. I am able to view SD content on my desktop (Athlon x2 3800+
2.0GHz) at 1680x1050 with the nv driver without problem. I don't think I
have tried OTA HD on it.

I also switched from KnoppMyth to Mythbuntu and found the screen saver a
bit odd at first. It does not activate while watching a recording (video
files, etc) though and so it has never been a problem for me.

Cheers,
James

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myth at dermanouelian

Nov 3, 2008, 12:01 PM

Post #4 of 5 (1650 views)
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Re: A quick look at Mythbuntu 8.10 [In reply to]

On Nov 3, 2008, at 11:51 AM, James Crow wrote:

> Did you look at top during OTA HD playback? I am using Mythbuntu
> 8.10 on
> two machines (Athlon 64x2 5000+, 2.6 GHz and Geforce 8400gs cards) and
> they easily handle HD mpeg2. If I watch with top (or htop) I see that
> mythfrontend consumes about 60% and X about 15% so there is room to
> spare. I am able to view SD content on my desktop (Athlon x2 3800+
> 2.0GHz) at 1680x1050 with the nv driver without problem. I don't
> think I
> have tried OTA HD on it.
>
> I also switched from KnoppMyth to Mythbuntu and found the screen
> saver a
> bit odd at first. It does not activate while watching a recording
> (video
> files, etc) though and so it has never been a problem for me.

I believe the screensaver is configured as on by default because a lot
of people in the past have had problems getting it to work correctly
(would blank while watching programs, TV would sleep and not wake up,
etc), so now instead of fighting to get it to work, you can just turn
it off if you don't want it.

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florin at andrei

Nov 4, 2008, 10:27 AM

Post #5 of 5 (1597 views)
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Re: A quick look at Mythbuntu 8.10 [In reply to]

Colin McGregor wrote:
>
> trivial was the screen save is on by default (which I don't want). Far

I wish the black screensaver was enabled, but with something like 20%
transparency. That would be pretty cool, and would not confuse people
("is the screensaver on, or is this thing turned off?"). But I have no
idea how to do that.

> more serious was watching OTA HDTV, which would stutter every few
> seconds, something I find unacceptable.

Sounds like some X or driver config tweak missing.

I used Mythbuntu 8.04 and 8.10 - either standalone, or as a frontend
with the backend running on CentOS 5, and HD works very well. The
resolution is set to 1080p and everything is scaled / deinterlaced live.
Even with a slow graphics card (embedded GeForce 8200, shared memory,
slower than molasses), it's still fast enough.

This is true for both situations: either using the X / NVidia default
settings made by the installer, or using a xorg.conf file generated by
the NVidia config tool.

By the way, I activated the most recent drivers offered by the distro,
ver 177. Mythbuntu allows you to choose, so I went with the most recent.

--
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/
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