[angeloaz]

Interesting. I have a similar setup and LiveTV (and recordings) have not been great. MythTV 0.27 on Ubuntu server 14.04 and HDHomeRun Plus results in the video lagging behind the audio, some times the video freezes completely while the audio continues. I also get complete crashes on occasion. This only happens on FireTV running XBMC on Windows or Linux is fine. So what settings do you use for acceleration? MediaCodec off and libstagefright on?

Yes, MediaCodec off, libstagefright on. You should be able to verify the codec being used in playback with the 'o' key (http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Codecinfo). I think if you see "stf-mpeg2" as the video codec, you know it's stagefright. Changing channels improved drastically with no transcoding on the HDHR Plus. It changes just as fast and smooth as Dish Network does for me now. Perhaps H.264 is harder to decode at first or more sensitive to weaker OTA signals -- which may explain its poorer behavior in some cases?

I also have audio passthrough enabled for Dolby Digital -- not sure if that mitigates the audio/video lag in some way.

I would be curious to know if you see a jump in reliability by turning transcoding off on your HDHR Plus. Part of the complication with that is network bandwidth: I've got my AFTV using ethernet and not WiFi. Not sure how WiFi can handle ~2MB/s that MPEG2 can generate.

I'll give your settings a shot. To be honest channel changing hasn't been that bad for me. Though my signals are relatively strong thanks to my roof mounted antenna. One question though. When disabling transcoding, does that mean you can no longer enable deinterlacing for 1080i ATSC channels? That my get annoying for me, but I will at least try it out. It would be better to have interlaced video than to have video that gets horribly out of sync or having XBMC crash completely. I will try it out tonight after work and report back.

From what I can tell, turning off MediaCodec is what eliminates the deinterlace option. I don't think libstagefright allows that option.

Here in Tucson, I only notice interlacing on the SD (non-HD) channels -- which I don't watch much of. But you're right, it's terribly annoying.