[SandmanCL]

The picture above also shows the motion blur on the scrolling text at the bottom :-)

[Gamester17]

@SandmanCL, the 'motion-blur' you are seeing is not a bug;

The images you posted display sure signes that the video is interlaced source and not progressive source, (either that or it has been poorly/inproperly deinterlaced). Niether of XBMC video players (MPlayer and DVDplayer) automaticly enables deinterlacing by default, (that is because XBMC's detection rutine for interlaced video is far from perfect). You can enable different types of "Interlaced Handling" from Video Settings while playing a video, see:
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/inde...o_Settings

For more information about interlacing/deinterlacing (versus progressive scan) please see wikipedia.org:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinterlacing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_scan

[SandmanCL]

Thanks, Gamester17. I had forgotten about that there are settings available while playing a video that aren't there under the normal Settings menu. I chose deinterlacing "Bob" and it is working pretty well. I chose View mode "zoom" to get rid of the scan line. Now it looks much more like a normal TV would

[Gamester17]

Girlfriend arguments for why this still isn't as convenient as watching regular cable:
- It takes ~ 15 seconds to "tune" to a station.
- We can't just select a stream to play it since DVDPlayer isn't default

The 15-seconds delay between switching channels could at least party be depend oo the cache-buffer set in XBMC setting, so try lowering the network video buffer (which I assume hdhomerun:// use?) to something really low (like 256KB) or even test disabling it completly and then try to "tune" in to different stations. This will probebely not solve the issue completly but it may speed it up some. Please repost your result with different cache settings.

As for the other issue goes, maybe elupus can hard code hdhomerun:// to use the DVDPlayer as a temporary workaround(?). But at the same time you might want to think about lobbying the idea directly to the MPlayer development-team, so that they will implement the same feature nativly in MPlayer (for Linux/UNIX/Win32). That way they themselves will have personal interest to fix any current and future problems MPlayer have with HDHomeRun streams. I suggest you start by submitting an Enhancement Request (MPlayer bug severity), then send a polite e-mail (with a [FEATURE SUGGESTION] header) to the MPlayer-dev-eng mailing-list (registration required first), and if you/someone can afford it offer to buy any volenteering USA/Canada located developer there one or a few HDHomeRun boxes. Note that you have to tred lightly when you as a non-developer submit a request/suggestion to the MPlayer-dev-eng mailing-list, do not write anything that could be interpet as a demand or make it sound like it is more important than anything else, basiclly suck up to them in the nicest possible way, without over doing it.

You can give them this link as well when describing what HDHomeRun can do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdhomerun

Good luck

[SandmanCL]

I've been trying out different cache network settings (Video: Local network/Internet and Unknown Internet) to no avail. 8MB, 256KB or None, it takes the same amount of time to "tune" a station. I just tried timing it, and it seems like 19 seconds is the magic wait time.

I'll relay your suggestion to the HDHomeRun people to have them try to lobby the mplayer devels. They'll probably have more leverage than me :-)

[elupus]

cache is not an issue with dvdplayer. (it doesn't care for it). I'm still abit surprised that mplayer doesn't work. Think you could give me alog?

That dvdplayer takes a while to start is probably because it probes the video stream to figure out what's in it before starting. I could potentially make it not probe the stream to start with, and force it to use mpeg-ts. should speed it up. could potentially break it too thou . let me know if you wish to try it. btw SandmanCL, feel free to contact me privately then maybe we can test it out about simpler.

That first scanline is probably closed-caption data. I though libmpeg would ditch that when outputing everything. Will see if I can find a sample to fix it.

[asg]

That dvdplayer takes a while to start is probably because it probes the video stream to figure out what's in it before starting. I could potentially make it not probe the stream to start with, and force it to use mpeg-ts. should speed it up.

Maybe you could only disable the probing if the dvdplayer is starting a hdhomerun or http stream. I think the changes would also improve the startup of other network streaming solutions like vdr, mythv and others.

[SandmanCL]

Just to support the log delay I've reported:

13:41:26 M: 39149568 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: Opening: hdhomerun://1010E8C2/tuner0?channel=qam:114&program=1
13:41:26 M: 39149568 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::CloseFile()
13:41:26 M: 39149568 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: waiting for threads to exit
13:41:26 M: 39149568 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: finished waiting
13:41:26 M: 38625280 NOTICE: Creating InputStream
13:41:26 M: 38559744 DEBUG: dllbind: family:2 port:0 ip:0.0.0.0
13:41:26 M: 36052992 DEBUG: dllbind: family:2 port:58549 ip:0.0.0.0
13:41:26 M: 35528704 NOTICE: Creating Demuxer
13:41:44 M: 30101504 INFO: ffmpeg: Input #0, mpegts, from 'hdhomerun://1010E8C2/tuner0?channel=qam:114&program=1':
13:41:44 M: 30101504 INFO: ffmpeg: Duration: N/A, bitrate: 15320 kb/s
13:41:44 M: 30101504 INFO: ffmpeg: Stream #0.0[0x800]: Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 704x480, 15000 kb/s, 29.97 fps®
13:41:44 M: 30101504 INFO: ffmpeg: Stream #0.1[0x801](eng): Audio: 0x0000, 48000 Hz, stereo, 192 kb/s
13:41:44 M: 30101504 INFO: ffmpeg: Stream #0.2[0x802](spa): Audio: 0x0000, 48000 Hz, mono, 128 kb/s


Notice the 18 second delay between "Creating Demuxer" and "INFO: ffmpeg: Input #0", after which the stream starts playing. I haven't removed any entries in the log between 13:41:26 and 13:41:44.

@elupus, I was going to include the mplayer log here as well but then I remembered why debug logging of those sessions are a bit exsessive. Will provide a non-debug one shortly.

[elupus]

i've changed default player for hdhomerun streams to dvdplayer, and removed a analysing step in the startup of hdhomerun streams. should speed them up alot.

[SandmanCL]

Sweet, can't wait to try out the next build

[asg]

what if i assign a http stream via python to the PLAYER_CORE_DVDPLAYER .. Should this also startup faster?

[elupus]

i've made changes to the player to make it startup quicker. if you force dvdplayer you get the same result as if you force it from inside xbmc. (ie it works, as mplayer doesn't work at all)

[ultrabrutal]

i've changed default player for hdhomerun streams to dvdplayer, and removed a analysing step in the startup of hdhomerun streams. should speed them up alot.

Is this something which could benefit the tuxbox client too by any chance, as it also takes along time when tuning channels? tnx

[SandmanCL]

I just installed the 2007-05-14 build, and the DVDPlayer is now used by default on HDHomeRun files. Thanks, elupus !

"Tuning time" has been decreased substantially, now "only" 11 seconds or so.

[asg]

Ive just installed the latest T3CH build (rev9030) to test the newly committed changes to the dvdplayer startup. Unfortunately i couldnt mention any improvements while starting a local http stream (tuxbox/vdr).

Is the analysing step only skipped if its a hdhomerun url? Would be great if it could also been skipped when starting a http stream.

Regards,
asciii