However we do have HD mpeg2 in the land down under.
HD mpeg2 does not need a lot of CPU horsepower to decode.
On the RPi2 playing HD 1080i video, the 4 cores hover around 5% CPU.
De-interlacing SD and HD streams on the RPi 2 results in good video quality.
(2015-01-31, 17:05)popcornmix Wrote: For DVD resolution the Pi will do a motion adaptive deinterlace similar to YADIF.
For higher resolutions (e.g. 1080i) it will do bob. Both will optionally double framerate.
TvHeadend on Linux devices has a very low CPU footprint. My single core ATV1 - TvHeadend server barely gets above 5% load when running TvHeadend.
Running both a backend and frontend on the RPi2 is definately doable, as Noggin has said tho network bandwidth on the RPi 2 using its shared USB (for external HDD recording) and Ethernet is the million dollar question.
If I get time I will try and get TvHeadend on to my old RPi B+ using a spare USB DVB-T Tuner and find out.
Ok got around to doing some testing, Hardware / Software setup:
- RPi B+ on 1100Mhz Overclocking and force_turbo=1 (ie.Overclock all the time, not dynamically)
- NOOBS micro SDHC card
- iPad1 USB power
- USB2 Stick for recordings
- Sony Play TV
PAL DVB-T tuner (corrected for Noggin's sanity, read in next post
)
- TvHeadend backend, installed from Services in OpenElec 5.05 (Unofficial Repo)
- TvHeadend client (frontend) on Kodi
- Freeview Channels in Oz, broadcast in mpeg2, up to 14Mbps, interlaced naturally.
Results:
- Yes its works, I can record one HD channel to the USB stick and watch another HD Channel, or even play catchup whilst recording.
- Dual Tuner HD recording works, but this does slow down the Kodi GUI markedly.
- Skipping through video is reasonable.
- Channel changes take approx. 5 seconds if recording in the background. Otherwise its about 2 secs.
- Using other TvHeadend client over the network with from the RPi works. Recorded video and OTA.
- I still see the square rainbow occasionally tho.
Conclusion, it works but it is not slick at all when recording and using Kodi for other uses. CPU hits 95% regularly and you need a sorted power supply or a powered USB hub as I'm seeing the dreaded square rainbow in the top right corner of the screen which tells me I have power supply issues.
However, If I kill Kodi itself and leave TvHeadend running as a hedless server. The RPi B+ then become usefull. Even recording two HD channels at once and watching a third over the local network only sees the CPU load at around 65%. No power issues then either.
I would think a RPi2 should work easily as both a backend and frontend, as the CPU load would be spread out across the 4 cores.
That may be my next test.
Ok just tested with the RPi 2 same setup as above, results:
- No Overclocking this time, max CPU load when testing the following resulted in approx 15% CPU load across 4 cores.
- Much better performance, recording 2 HD channels at once and watching a pre recorded HD one does not slow down Kodi GUI
- Snappy changes of channels and skipping through video
- TvHeadend networked client video starts up much quicker.
- Timeshifting is still a WIP, I can pause and resume, but not skip around.
Conclusion, very usable as both a TvHeadend backend and frontend, even with a Networked client.
Hint, I formatted my USB stick as a fuse-ext2 format in OSX and was then able to write to it, no mounting necessary in Openelec. Just hotplug it in.
It pops up in the /media/USBStickname folder on the RPi.
