MythTV + vdpau now playing 1080i HD content well in 0810 alpha

[totallymaxed]

Andrew - can I ask a fairly obvious question? Why MythTV, not VDR? I thought both CHT and Niz23 both used VDR exclusively?

Also, I think, from the nVidia documentation, that even 7000 series _integrated_ chipsets _with_ the PV feature will also support VDPAU, such as the 7050PV.

Hi Colin,

Well since last Friday we have been running some tests on MythTV 0.21 (the current stable version available for 8.10/9.04)...initially this was just out of interest to compare how it handled 'weak' or disrupted signals from DVB-S...as part of our prep for 0810. However once we go it installed we very quickly realised how far MythTv has come since we last looked at it (probably 3'ish years ago now!). What we discovered was Myth has evolved to have;

- Full Multiplex recording (the original reason why we went with vdr)
- Very powerful and sophisticated recording timers that integrate really well with off-air EPG data
- A really well designed and easily skinnable OSD
- An equally well designed/skinnable EPG that uses all of the off-air EPG data (like 'Genre'...record all the 'Thrillers' automatically for me)
- A fully integrated MHEG interactive services engine...this means that all the UK off-air MHEG based broadcast services are now accessible to
- Excellent support for capture cards and configuration options to squeeze as much quality out of them as possible
- Excellent support for HD from DVB-S and support for the vdpau Nvidia api NOW.

So the upshot is that weare almost certainly going to transition as a company to MythTV in the very near future. All our vdr code and changes are in the svn I believe and will be part of 0810 Beta's but we will focus from now on MythTV and you will see in time any changes, fixes etc for Myth uploaded by us to the svn too.

I know this might seem a big change (and it is!) but when we weighed up all that MythTV can do now against vdr and the uncertain time we will wait for the 1.7x release...it really was an easy decision.

All the best

Andrew

PS I'm happy to discuss this in more detail here if people want to understand why we have made this decision

Wow - that is big!!! Well I guess then its time for me to head that way as well. The main issues I had with MythTV (and I only really tried it twice, so harly a fair run, and never really got it working!) was the initial setup config was really confusing to me, and the interface was so obviously different from LinuxMCE's GUI. I know the latter was a concern to you in the past, as well. What is your position now, and do you intend addressing that at all, can it be addressed, and how much work is involved, do you think?

Well I think there will always be a 'mismatch' between the Orbiter and various apps that are integrated with it...its kind of innevitable unless you bring all the functionality directly into the Orbiter...and  I really cant see that either happening or being possible with the Orbiter we have today (my personal opinion...others may strongly disagree with that). So in my oprinion there is likely to always be some kind of sense of 'transition' when you leave the Orbiter and arrive in one of the 'embedded' apps. So we just take a pragmatic view on that and accept that fact.... and work towards minimising that ransition while still exploiting as much of the 'embedded' apps capabilities as possible. With Myth you have a very powerful ability to reshape and redesign all of the UI using XML...this is really powerful I have to say and does not require using any special tools. So you have the menu system, the OSD (seen during live TV or recorded TV playback) and the EPG. By learning the XML markup needed to redesign the 3 areas you can have pretty deep control of how MythTV interacts with users and what the visual style of the UI is too.

Putting the customisability aspects aside for a moment I have to say that the SD and especially the HD picture quality is truly amazing...no one has failed to be impressed by this (and believe me this is a very 'jaded' audience here who have 'seen it all before'...they are very hard to impress). Compairing HD from a UK Freesat STB and the same channel from MythTV it was 100% impossible for anyone to say which was which...the only give away was that in MythTV the BBC MHEG based interactive service outperformed the STB by a factor of 6-8 times (this was revelation after using STB's I can tell you!)

Andrew

[colinjones]

That's all very interesting news, good to hear.

On the 'inevitability' angle, I think that is a matter of opinion. For instance, it is easy to forget that Xine is just another of those "embedded apps" and this is completely transparent and appears to be completely a part of the Orbiter. This, of course, is achieved by using the library implementation of Xine rather than the Xine GUI application, and so you can show as much or as little as you wish allowing you to wrap it completely into the UI... note, without having to bring it into the Orbiter.

Theoretically, doing the same with either VDR or Myth is entirely possible if those respective projects also built "lib" implementations of their projects rather than just complete applications with UIs. The drive for the Xine project to do so is obvious, but for Myth I guess its not really a big issue for them so unlikely to happen!

Will have to work towards switching to Myth!

[totallymaxed]

That's all very interesting news, good to hear.

On the 'inevitability' angle, I think that is a matter of opinion. For instance, it is easy to forget that Xine is just another of those "embedded apps" and this is completely transparent and appears to be completely a part of the Orbiter. This, of course, is achieved by using the library implementation of Xine rather than the Xine GUI application, and so you can show as much or as little as you wish allowing you to wrap it completely into the UI... note, without having to bring it into the Orbiter.

Theoretically, doing the same with either VDR or Myth is entirely possible if those respective projects also built "lib" implementations of their projects rather than just complete applications with UIs. The drive for the Xine project to do so is obvious, but for Myth I guess its not really a big issue for them so unlikely to happen!

Will have to work towards switching to Myth!

Colin the point I was making was not to do with Xine at all...of course I understand how this software is structured ;-)... the issue is how do you deliver an all encompassing and consistent UI across all of the underlying functionality. I agree with Thom that ideally the Orbiters UI would span all of the functionality we integrate and would have a richer toolset of UI elements to allow this to be achieved. But the reality is thats a big piece of code to change/enhance and it needs ro be done right as well as the Orbiter is a critical element of the whole system.

In the meantime we plan to make some new Myth Themes so that when a user does transition into TV from the Orbiter the experience inside Myth is closer visually to that of the Orbiter.

Andrew

[Marie.O]

Andrew,

what is your timetable to have DVB-S and DVB-T cards be PnP for Myth?

[totallymaxed]

Andrew,

what is your timetable to have DVB-S and DVB-T cards be PnP for Myth?

We're looking at PnP for the DVB-S2 USB2104 & Kworld 399U DVB-T... in the next few weeks is a rough guess.

Andrew

[colinjones]

In the meantime we plan to make some new Myth Themes so that when a user does transition into TV from the Orbiter the experience inside Myth is closer visually to that of the Orbiter.

ooo, cool! Thanks!

[krys]

hey all,
is there any way to see if my mythTV profile is using vdpau? I set everything up the best I could using the instructions on the avenard page, but my CPU is pegged when watching a 720p movie and stuttering, and at about 80% when watching SD. I assume this means vdpau is not being used, but have no idea why. Can anyone post, line by line what their mythTV profile looks like? My mythTV screen didnt seem to have the exact same options that the Avenard page did, but they were close enough that I assumed them to be correct.

Also, I noticed that mythTV seemed to be using mplayer to play the movies (watched it in top) is this whats supposed to happen?
Thanks,
-krys

[totallymaxed]

hey all,
is there any way to see if my mythTV profile is using vdpau? I set everything up the best I could using the instructions on the avenard page, but my CPU is pegged when watching a 720p movie and stuttering, and at about 80% when watching SD. I assume this means vdpau is not being used, but have no idea why. Can anyone post, line by line what their mythTV profile looks like? My mythTV screen didnt seem to have the exact same options that the Avenard page did, but they were close enough that I assumed them to be correct.

Also, I noticed that mythTV seemed to be using mplayer to play the movies (watched it in top) is this whats supposed to happen?
Thanks,
-krys

Well I think I can confirm its not working ;-)

The avenard instructions are what we used to figure this out the first time...they do work...but its easy to make a mistake and then MythTV will not take advantage of vdpau. Double check your MythTV profile to make sure you have that setup as per the avenard instructions. We have been running tests with the BBC HD channel which is broadcast in 1080i here on DVB-S and we have recorded and 'watched' (ie we have an HD enabled MD running in our test area 24-7) 100's of hours of HD content over the last several weeks and we see no stutter, tearing or other visual artifacts and in 'side-by'side' comparison with an 1080i HD STB. You should see less that 25% CPU utilisation in our experience.

See here for more info on setting up MythTV + vdpau http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/VDPAU

Our installations are using MythTV_Player for playback by the way.

All the best

Andrew

[krys]

One more question, have you tried all of this from a MD or are you just using a core/hybrid? I have been working from a MD and MythTV backend crashes everytime I go to mythTv from the MD. After I reset the backend everything appears to be fine. Is this because my MD is running the MythTV version from avenard and my core is running the LMCE mythTV version? Should I upgrade the core using the avenard repo, it doesnt have a Nvidia card... but its headless so I dont need to watch videos on it.
-Krys

[totallymaxed]

One more question, have you tried all of this from a MD or are you just using a core/hybrid? I have been working from a MD and MythTV backend crashes everytime I go to mythTv from the MD. After I reset the backend everything appears to be fine. Is this because my MD is running the MythTV version from avenard and my core is running the LinuxMCE mythTV version? Should I upgrade the core using the avenard repo, it doesnt have a Nvidia card... but its headless so I dont need to watch videos on it.
-Krys

All of out HD testing is done on MD's under alpha 0810. You should make sure that the backend and the frontends are all running the same MythTV version (the backend does not necessarily need to be installed from avenard though...and definitely should not be if you do not have nVidia in your Core)

Andrew

[Viking]

HI,

I am in the middle of testing MythTV with VDPAU, but I am quite sure that VDPAU is activated as CPU usage went down. But I am only testing SD-TV at the moment. HD TV is next.

I changed the wiki to reflect what I have done to get it working.

Have fun testing it :
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/MythTV#EXPERIMENTAL:_Update_MythTV_to_VDPAU_version_on_0810

Greetings
Viking