[mythtvnz] Raspbmc doesn't quite cut it as a mythtv frontend.

[Sam Hadley-Jones]

On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 9:17 PM, David Tildesley <davotnz [at] yahoo> wrote:
> using the Mythtv pvr plugin. Picture is OK but pauses a lot @ 1920 * 1080.
> CPU running at about 75% Load averages are high (5.32, 5.25. 4.32). Crashed.

I have quite a different experience with my Raspberry Pis over the past 6 months. I have two running Openelec (another XBMC distro). After flashing Openelec, plugging it in and booting, I gave it the backend IP and I was MythTVing in under 5 minutes. A few points:

1. Most modern TV remotes work out-of-the-box over HDMI-CEC. 
2. No tweaks required to get up and running. As long as the Pi knows about the backend, you'll be watching recordings in no time.
3. No crashing.
4. The Pi can only fast forward and rewind in chunks, set at 30secs. Slightly annoying but not a show-stopper.
5. There appears to be some network lag - probably CPU bound. The result is that sometimes you can't fastforward a recording immediately after starting playback as the network buffer is empty. This appears to be actively worked on as it's improved in recent releases.
6. XBMC recovers well from bitstream corruption. I have a cheap-and-nasty USB DVB-T dongle with poor sensitivity the throws in garbage frames every once in a while. (planning on replacing, btw. Any suggestions?)
7. Aside from MythTV recordings, XBMC's movie, TV show and music cataloguing and UI is light years ahead of MythTV.
8. With moderate overclocking of the Pi (just a settings change), I can play my Blu-ray full stream backups (made using MakeMKV) from the backend server with no trouble. 
9. HTS TVHeadend can be "turned on" in openelec for a total backend and fronted solution on one Pi. I'm keen to test how well this really works as I'm a little sceptical about the Pi's ability to record multiple streams while I watch a Blu-ray sized movie. I'll get onto this once I have a tuner dongle free. HTS lacks some scheduling and management features so I don't think I'll switch just yet.
10. Android phones and tablets make great remotes using Yatze app over wifi. Perfect for my (older) bedroom TV that only has DVI in.
11. Tons of apps for XBMC - Youtube, etc.

All-in-all a pretty positive experience with Raspberry Pi frontends and, most importantly, WAF is maintained. I've been running MythTV for 7 years and toying with the XBMC MythTV plug-in for a few years. It's at a point now where its mature enough to ditch the MythTV frontend. Finally, a frontend under 5W of power and $60!

Sam.