Home Theatre computer

[Amos Shapira]

2009/11/10 geoffrey mendelson <geoffreymendelson at gmail.com>:
>
> On Nov 9, 2009, at 10:36 PM, Noam Rathaus wrote:
>>
>> There are US solutions that are non-Apple to do what I am looking for, but
>> I
>> can't find them in Israel.
>
>
> Apple bases their operating system on BSD and it is open source. Their GUI
> is not, but there is a decent port of X Windows, and a user community
> supported upgrade to the Apple base product. Open source software works very
> well on it and there a lots of things ported to it.

I think Noam's rant was against FIT-PC2, not Apple.

>
> To answer another posting, there will always be a delay switching channels
> on a digitial TV system. While analog TV sent a new frame every 1/25 of a
> second, digital TV uses the key frame concept. Every once in a while an
> entire frame is sent, the rest of the time, the frames are sent as the
> difference between the current frame and the previous one. So you won't get
> a picture until the next key frame is received and decoded.
>
> How often a key frame is sent depends upon the boradcaster. Israel digitial
> TV is an attempt at squeezing the most you can get out of a single signal,
> so the key frames are sent less frequently. I've never timed it, but it
> seems like a long time.

You must be replying to my post and as usual you give reveal great
knowledge of "behind the scenes".

But your explanation doesn't sit with the difference between the
experience of set-top (or built-in) digital receiver, which switches
digital channels instantly, to what I was told I should expect from a
PC (or just Linux?) based receiver *in the same country*. Can you
explain this?

> The other problelm is a design feature of MythTv. In order to make live
> pause and backup work, MythTv always records what you are watching. The
> video you see is a playback of the recorded video. Depending upon the
> compression you use to record and the speed of your processors, the delay
> can be 2-3 seconds (or more).

BTW - I just read on Slashdot that a new MythTV is out (I think 0.22).
18 months after 0.21 and claims to have many updates and improvements.

Cheers,

--Amos