Mailing List Archive

________________________________
From: Jim Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, 28 August 2020 1:48 am
To: Discussion about MythTV
Subject: [mythtv-users] mythtv on Raspberry 4 4GB with 64 bit OS's

I got mythbackend and mythfrontend working on a RPi4 4GB running from a
SSD using both Raspberry Pi OS (aarch64) and Ubuntu 20.04 aarch64.

However, to my eyes it made no difference. To me the RPI4 is still a
marginal frontend for USA OTA mpeg2 video. If the scene motion
increases the picture gets more jerky. Maybe at some point ffmpeg on
aarch64 can make improvements.

So for now for a cheap system but great video quality, I'd pick RPI4
4GB, USB3 SSD, with HDHR Quatro tuner for the backend and FireTV 4K for
the frontend.

Jim A


_______________________________________________

I haven't been following closely- does the RPI4 need the additional mpeg2 licence purchased / enabled or is that only earlier versions?

On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 8:58 PM Mark Perkins <perkins1724@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Jim Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, 28 August 2020 1:48 am
> *To:* Discussion about MythTV
> *Subject:* [mythtv-users] mythtv on Raspberry 4 4GB with 64 bit OS's
>
> I got mythbackend and mythfrontend working on a RPi4 4GB running from a
> SSD using both Raspberry Pi OS (aarch64) and Ubuntu 20.04 aarch64.
>
> However, to my eyes it made no difference. To me the RPI4 is still a
> marginal frontend for USA OTA mpeg2 video. If the scene motion
> increases the picture gets more jerky. Maybe at some point ffmpeg on
> aarch64 can make improvements.
>
> So for now for a cheap system but great video quality, I'd pick RPI4
> 4GB, USB3 SSD, with HDHR Quatro tuner for the backend and FireTV 4K for
> the frontend.
>
> Jim A
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> I haven't been following closely- does the RPI4 need the additional mpeg2
> licence purchased / enabled or is that only earlier versions?
>

No HW support for mpeg2 in RPI4 and therefore no license available.

JimA

On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 8:04 PM James Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 8:58 PM Mark Perkins <perkins1724@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Jim Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Friday, 28 August 2020 1:48 am
>> *To:* Discussion about MythTV
>> *Subject:* [mythtv-users] mythtv on Raspberry 4 4GB with 64 bit OS's
>>
>> I got mythbackend and mythfrontend working on a RPi4 4GB running from a
>> SSD using both Raspberry Pi OS (aarch64) and Ubuntu 20.04 aarch64.
>>
>> However, to my eyes it made no difference. To me the RPI4 is still a
>> marginal frontend for USA OTA mpeg2 video. If the scene motion
>> increases the picture gets more jerky. Maybe at some point ffmpeg on
>> aarch64 can make improvements.
>>
>> So for now for a cheap system but great video quality, I'd pick RPI4
>> 4GB, USB3 SSD, with HDHR Quatro tuner for the backend and FireTV 4K for
>> the frontend.
>>
>> Jim A
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>> I haven't been following closely- does the RPI4 need the additional mpeg2
>> licence purchased / enabled or is that only earlier versions?
>>
>
> No HW support for mpeg2 in RPI4 and therefore no license available.
>
> JimA
>

From everything I have previously read, there is enough CPU in it to handle
ATSC with 0 issues. Do you have a playback profile with 4 cpus allocated
and the opengl or kernel deinterlacer set?

On 8/27/20 11:40 PM, Greg Oliver wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 8:04 PM James Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com
> <mailto:jfabernathy@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 8:58 PM Mark Perkins
> <perkins1724@hotmail.com <mailto:perkins1724@hotmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Jim Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com
> <mailto:jfabernathy@gmail.com>>
> *Sent:* Friday, 28 August 2020 1:48 am
> *To:* Discussion about MythTV
> *Subject:* [mythtv-users] mythtv on Raspberry 4 4GB with 64
> bit OS's
>
> I got mythbackend and mythfrontend working on a RPi4 4GB
> running from a
> SSD using both Raspberry Pi OS (aarch64) and Ubuntu 20.04
> aarch64.
>
> However, to my eyes it made no difference. To me the RPI4
> is still a
> marginal frontend for USA OTA mpeg2 video.  If the scene
> motion
> increases the picture gets more jerky. Maybe at some point
> ffmpeg on
> aarch64 can make improvements.
>
> So for now for a cheap system but great video quality, I'd
> pick RPI4
> 4GB, USB3 SSD, with HDHR Quatro tuner for the backend and
> FireTV 4K for
> the frontend.
>
> Jim A
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> I haven't been following closely- does the RPI4 need the
> additional mpeg2 licence purchased / enabled or is that only
> earlier versions?
>
>
> No HW support for mpeg2 in RPI4 and therefore no license available.
>
> JimA
>
>
> From everything I have previously read, there is enough CPU in it to
> handle ATSC with 0 issues.  Do you have a playback profile with 4 cpus
> allocated and the opengl or kernel deinterlacer set?

I have tried just about every combination, but best results seem to be
with standard, 4 CPUs, OpenGL decode and deinterlacers. A lot of people
might find what I can jerky acceptable. But with too much time on my
hands I've done way too much comparison on worse case videos. I find
Nvidia GT 1030/710 cards in Core i7 PCs to be flawless. I find the
Nvidia Shield TV to be almost the same if not exactly the same. FireTV
4K is right there also. RPi3s are good with LibrieELEC Kodi but I'm not
a great lover of Kodi interface. But for mythfrontend on RPi4 I always
find some part of an action scene that messes up a little and that
bothers me.

When I travel in my RV, I take a RPI4 mythtv combo and it works okay
enough for that but at home I just use Nvidia Shield. It's too
convenient and runs all my streaming services.

Jim A

On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 5:23 AM Jim Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I have tried just about every combination, but best results seem to be
> with standard, 4 CPUs, OpenGL decode and deinterlacers.
>

I too had an issue with jerky playback on v31 using a Pi 4. My wife said it
was OK to her, but it actually made me start to feel a little nauseous
after a few minutes of trying to watch a hockey game.

Then I found this: https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi#RPi4_Specific

It uses "MMAL" as decoder; I have no idea what that means, but when I
followed the directions here to set up a new playback profile and set
Mythfrontend to use it, it now works flawlessly with no jerkiness.

--Greg

On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 10:47 AM Greg Woods <greg@gregandeva.net> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 5:23 AM Jim Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> I have tried just about every combination, but best results seem to be
>> with standard, 4 CPUs, OpenGL decode and deinterlacers.
>>
>
> I too had an issue with jerky playback on v31 using a Pi 4. My wife said
> it was OK to her, but it actually made me start to feel a little nauseous
> after a few minutes of trying to watch a hockey game.
>
> Then I found this: https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi#RPi4_Specific
>
> It uses "MMAL" as decoder; I have no idea what that means, but when I
> followed the directions here to set up a new playback profile and set
> Mythfrontend to use it, it now works flawlessly with no jerkiness.
>
> --Greg
>

Greg,

Those are the settings I'm using and for most things it's fine. There are
some scenes like a headshot where the guy shakes his head and it looks
like some frames were skipped. Minor annoyances. I have test watched an NHL
hockey game recently and it was not bad, but after a few minutes I
switched back to my Shield TV to watch it remotely from the RPI4 backend.

Jim A

On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 8:25 AM James Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 10:47 AM Greg Woods <greg@gregandeva.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 5:23 AM Jim Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I have tried just about every combination, but best results seem to be
>>> with standard, 4 CPUs, OpenGL decode and deinterlacers.
>>>
>>
>> I too had an issue with jerky playback on v31 using a Pi 4. My wife said
>> it was OK to her, but it actually made me start to feel a little nauseous
>> after a few minutes of trying to watch a hockey game.
>>
>> Then I found this:
>> https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi#RPi4_Specific
>>
>> It uses "MMAL" as decoder; I have no idea what that means, but when I
>> followed the directions here to set up a new playback profile and set
>> Mythfrontend to use it, it now works flawlessly with no jerkiness.
>>
>> --Greg
>>
>
> Greg,
>
> Those are the settings I'm using and for most things it's fine. There are
> some scenes like a headshot where the guy shakes his head and it looks
> like some frames were skipped. Minor annoyances. I have test watched an NHL
> hockey game recently and it was not bad, but after a few minutes I
> switched back to my Shield TV to watch it remotely from the RPI4 backend.
>

Yeah, i agree mpeg2 on the Pi 4 is horrible no matter what you do. It got
a little better a few days ago with a recent kernel upgrade. I am running
now an overclocked Pi 4 with no X server, the video is watchable, but still
sucks compared with other players like Kodi for the same file. You can
follow what I have tried to smooth things at the forums,
https://forum.mythtv.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=3791.


>
> Jim A
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
> http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
> MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
>

On 8/27/20 12:17 PM, Jim Abernathy wrote:
> I got mythbackend and mythfrontend working on a RPi4 4GB running from
> a SSD using both Raspberry Pi OS (aarch64) and Ubuntu 20.04 aarch64.
>
> However, to my eyes it made no difference. To me the RPI4 is still a
> marginal frontend for USA OTA mpeg2 video.  If the scene motion
> increases the picture gets more jerky. Maybe at some point ffmpeg on
> aarch64 can make improvements.
>
> So for now for a cheap system but great video quality, I'd pick RPI4
> 4GB, USB3 SSD, with HDHR Quatro tuner for the backend and FireTV 4K
> for the frontend.
>
> Jim A


I may have to update my thinking on the RPI4 as a mythtv-frontend. I
found the 8-20-2020 Raspberry PI OS 64bit lite version and installed it
on an SATA SSD on USB3. I then put xserver-xorg with no-recommends
installed and then xfce4 minimum.

I installed my dependencies without ansibe because of the missing
packages in 64 bit. And then compiled mythtv from source.  Version v31-0-91.

Not thinking I ran it in the Desktop environment and it worked a little
better than it did previously on the same saved recordings.

When it dawned on me to run from the console without a desktop
environment, I installed pi-utils and ran ./run_mythfrontend.sh on a 4K TV.

The horizontal tearing that I had experienced before was gone on MPEG2
recordings and liveTV.  So I don't know if it's the move to
fixes/v31-0-91 or whether raspberry PI OS 64 has improved.

I also noticed that VLC on H.264 and streaming from HDHR tuners was very
good. That's what got me to try mythfrontend on a 64bit PIOS on the RPI4
4GB again.

I used the OpenGL Normal profile with Standard, 4 CPUs, Medium
deinterlacer quality.

Jim A



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