Mailing List Archive

Raspberry Pi 4B FE & Freeview = issues?
Hey folks,

Yesterday I spent a bunch of time on my MythTV setup to try and get a
working FE again[0]. Thinking part of my problems could be related to
the RPi3B I was using, I swapped it for a RPi4B.

I have the RPi4B all up and running now, but it can't decode recordings
from Freeview smoothly. This was more or less setting things up as
described here: https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi .

Playback is jerky, and not very pleasant to watch. The 4 CPU cores are
all pegged at max, and even if I overclock the CPU to 2GHz, they're
still pegged at ~100% and there is no noticeable improvement.

Is anyone successfully using a RPi4B as a FE in NZ?

Yes, I know that Kodi is an option, but I'd like to be able to run
mythfrontend.

Cheers,
Andrew


[0] Earlier this year I upgraded from Stretch -> Buster and v28 (I
think) -> v31 and the FE became unusable.
--
Andrew Ruthven, Wellington, New Zealand
andrew@etc.gen.nz |
Catalyst Cloud: | This space intentionally left blank
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Re: Raspberry Pi 4B FE & Freeview = issues? [ In reply to ]
On Sat, 2020-12-26 at 11:34 +1300, Andrew Ruthven wrote:
> Yes, I know that Kodi is an option, but I'd like to be able to run
> mythfrontend.

I've installed Kodi v18 to see how it compares. User interface is a bit
slower (and the recordings screen is nowhere near as good as
mythfrontend) but playback is smooth, and the CPU cores are all sitting
under 20%.

Cheers,
Andrew

--
Andrew Ruthven, Wellington, New Zealand
andrew@etc.gen.nz |
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Re: Raspberry Pi 4B FE & Freeview = issues? [ In reply to ]
I tried the RPi4B with MythTV earlier this year and had the same issue.
Tried a lot of things but never got playback working as well as with Kodi.
Kodi just worked with Pi while MythTV didn’t.

On Sat, 26 Dec 2020 at 11:34 AM, Andrew Ruthven <andrew@etc.gen.nz> wrote:

> Hey folks,
>
> Yesterday I spent a bunch of time on my MythTV setup to try and get a
> working FE again[0]. Thinking part of my problems could be related to
> the RPi3B I was using, I swapped it for a RPi4B.
>
> I have the RPi4B all up and running now, but it can't decode recordings
> from Freeview smoothly. This was more or less setting things up as
> described here: https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi .
>
> Playback is jerky, and not very pleasant to watch. The 4 CPU cores are
> all pegged at max, and even if I overclock the CPU to 2GHz, they're
> still pegged at ~100% and there is no noticeable improvement.
>
> Is anyone successfully using a RPi4B as a FE in NZ?
>
> Yes, I know that Kodi is an option, but I'd like to be able to run
> mythfrontend.
>
> Cheers,
> Andrew
>
>
> [0] Earlier this year I upgraded from Stretch -> Buster and v28 (I
> think) -> v31 and the FE became unusable.
> --
> Andrew Ruthven, Wellington, New Zealand
> andrew@etc.gen.nz |
> Catalyst Cloud: | This space intentionally left blank
> https://catalystcloud.nz |
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
Re: Raspberry Pi 4B FE & Freeview = issues? [ In reply to ]
On Sat, 2020-12-26 at 16:47 +1300, Fritz Hildebrand wrote:
> I tried the RPi4B with MythTV earlier this year and had the same
> issue. Tried a lot of things but never got playback working as well
> as with Kodi. Kodi just worked with Pi while MythTV didn’t.

Hey Fritz,

Thanks for the confirmation that I'm not going crazy. I'll switch to
Kodi for now and keep an eye on how MythTV goes on the Pi's.

Cheers,
Andrew

--
Andrew Ruthven, Wellington, New Zealand
andrew@etc.gen.nz |
Catalyst Cloud: | This space intentionally left blank
https://catalystcloud.nz |



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Re: Raspberry Pi 4B FE & Freeview = issues? [ In reply to ]
> On Sat, 2020-12-26 at 16:47 +1300, Fritz Hildebrand wrote:
>> I tried the RPi4B with MythTV earlier this year and had the same
>> issue. Tried a lot of things but never got playback working as well
>> as with Kodi. Kodi just worked with Pi while MythTV didnâ??t.
>
> Hey Fritz,
>
> Thanks for the confirmation that I'm not going crazy. I'll switch to
> Kodi for now and keep an eye on how MythTV goes on the Pi's.
>

There are still a bunch of video playback issues with Pi4. What distro are
you using on the Pi?

Hopefully some of the recent video updates will fix things.

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Re: Raspberry Pi 4B FE & Freeview = issues? [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 2021-01-13 at 16:22 +1300, OpenMedia Support wrote:
> > Thanks for the confirmation that I'm not going crazy. I'll switch
> > to
> > Kodi for now and keep an eye on how MythTV goes on the Pi's.
> >
>
> There are still a bunch of video playback issues with Pi4. What
> distro are you using on the Pi?

Aye.

Raspbian Buster. Very vanilla, debootstrap with only the required
packages installed.

> Hopefully some of the recent video updates will fix things.

Fingers crossed.

All four cores sit about 95% consistently when playing back video, and
it isn't at all smooth.

Cheers,
Andrew

--
Andrew Ruthven, Wellington, New Zealand
andrew@etc.gen.nz |
Catalyst Cloud: | This space intentionally left blank
https://catalystcloud.nz |



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Re: Raspberry Pi 4B FE & Freeview = issues? [ In reply to ]
> On Wed, 2021-01-13 at 16:22 +1300, OpenMedia Support wrote:
>> > Thanks for the confirmation that I'm not going crazy. I'll switch
>> > to
>> > Kodi for now and keep an eye on how MythTV goes on the Pi's.
>> >
>>
>> There are still a bunch of video playback issues with Pi4. What
>> distro are you using on the Pi?
>
> Aye.
>
> Raspbian Buster. Very vanilla, debootstrap with only the required
> packages installed.
>
>> Hopefully some of the recent video updates will fix things.
>
> Fingers crossed.
>
> All four cores sit about 95% consistently when playing back video, and
> it isn't at all smooth.

Sounds about right - a bunch of the HW acceleration isn't working correctly.

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