ARGUS TV

Hi Folks.

Im having some problems with the video quality on live tv (haven't tried recording yet).

My setup is running XBMC Frodo on an apple TV2. I have a server in the basement running Argus Server and it has my over the air HD antenna pumping ito it.

When I use the Argus plugin for XBMC on my appleTV2,the playback on MOST of my 31 over the air stations is unwatchable. I found that both the sound and video are littered with brievely pauses (im assuming its buffering) however the sound seems to pause less then the video so the two get out of sync (not sure if this is relevant or not). It probably takes about 30 seconds to play about 3 seconds of actual live video stream.

HOWEVER .. its not like that on all stations. 2 of the stations play perfectly. and it doesn't seem DH /SD related. Granted most of my 31 stations are HD however 1 of the 2 stations that play great are in fact HD.

I tried adjusting the video settings (I think I adjusted something called "deinterlaced" bases on some newsgroup recomends but I dont have it in front of me right now so I cant remember the exact term.

FINALLY - this all works PERFECT when I run XBMC (same version - FRODO) on my laptop. no playback issues at all. it seems as though when I do it via AppleTV it messes up.

Oh.. also.. my appleTV2 is hardwired to the network as opposed to wireless so I dont think I have any network bandwith issues on the appleTV. For example, when I watch HD movies even as big as 14G from my NAS (via XBMC also) it has plenty of bandwith.


Any thoughts?

Kevin

Sounds to me like the ATV simply isn't up to the task. HDTV is a very difficult beast compared to normal HD video.
I had a video card in a PC which could play everything except HDTV.

Edit: Sorry folks, I replied from Tapatalk and didn't realise this post was waiting to be approved. Now everyone can see it...

For testing purposes I have an ATV2, but I was not impressed with its performance. In the living room I now have an ATV1 with Crystal HD card and the family is very happy with it.

But I must confess that we NEVER use XBMC to watch Live TV.

Hi Red, so were you running Argus directly on the AppleTV1? How did you do that without using XBMC? That would be neat if it was an option.

Granted Live TV could be watched directly but we generally do the pause thing multiple times during the show. You know .. kids screaming.. washroom breaks etc...

I gotta figure that someone out there has gotten this to work.. somewhere.. somehow. Hoping they are reading these posts!
Kevin

I'm using Crystalbuntu on the ATV1 (http://www.crystalbuntu.com/).

By replacing the ATV1 WiFi card with a Crystal HD card, the ATV1 can output full 1080p video without burdening the CPU. The Crystalbuntu distribution starts up with XBMC (and the ARGUS addon) by default and this effectively turns the ATV1 into a really easy to use device no longer restrained to the boundaries of the Apple ecosystem.

The ATV1 HDMI is connected to my audio set, which routes the video to the TV.

By combining this with a Logitech Harmony remote usage is simple and straightforward. My wife is very happy with this setup.

Cheers,
Fred