2012-02-26, 14:55
Because you did not provide much information about which XBMC pvr build you are using, which version of the addon and whether you are using the backend and frontend on the same machine or on different pc's I can only give a general explanation.
Basically, the contributors that influence the channel switch times are:
I can't influence 1-3. You can see the time it takes for 1-3 in when using the debug version of the TVServerXBMC plugin (the .exe version).
Note that first time tuning takes longer than a channel switch due to the initialization of your card and the creation of the timeshift buffer (@TV Server).
Currently, there are 2 different MediaPortal pvr addons: "ffmpeg" and "tsreader". The first one is distributed in the builds from Dushmaniac (opdenkamp). The tsreader version is currently only in my builds.
The "ffmpeg" version uses RTSP streams for channel playback and this results in large channel switch times 6-20 sec. One of the reasons is that XBMC's internal ffmpeg library takes quite some time to start the playback of an RTSP url from the TV Server.
Because I can't really speed-up this part, I started with a different approach to re-use parts of the playback code from MediaPortal: the tsreader version.
This addon has much faster channel switch times: 2-5 s in my case. I'm still working on getting this faster, but similar channel switch times as in MediaPortal itself should be possible in your case.
Basically, the contributors that influence the channel switch times are:
- the time it takes to tune a particular channel (TV Server)
- the time it takes to decrypt an encrypted channel (TV Server/CAM)
- the time it takes to start timeshifting (TVServer)
- the time it takes to fetch the stream URL / timeshift filename (MediaPortal pvr addon)
- the time it takes to start the stream playback (addon + XBMC)
I can't influence 1-3. You can see the time it takes for 1-3 in when using the debug version of the TVServerXBMC plugin (the .exe version).
Note that first time tuning takes longer than a channel switch due to the initialization of your card and the creation of the timeshift buffer (@TV Server).
Currently, there are 2 different MediaPortal pvr addons: "ffmpeg" and "tsreader". The first one is distributed in the builds from Dushmaniac (opdenkamp). The tsreader version is currently only in my builds.
The "ffmpeg" version uses RTSP streams for channel playback and this results in large channel switch times 6-20 sec. One of the reasons is that XBMC's internal ffmpeg library takes quite some time to start the playback of an RTSP url from the TV Server.
Because I can't really speed-up this part, I started with a different approach to re-use parts of the playback code from MediaPortal: the tsreader version.
This addon has much faster channel switch times: 2-5 s in my case. I'm still working on getting this faster, but similar channel switch times as in MediaPortal itself should be possible in your case.
