more MythTV and Intel G33 video performance

Apparently the key to HD playback on MythTV using the Intel integrated X3100 video card (G33 chipset) is not the "extra audio buffering" setting. In a previous post, I enabled this setting and suddenly my HD video stopped stuttering.

Unfortunately, that wasn't totally the solution. When I started playing back my homemade DVDs (from iDVD), I noticed they were all playing back audio fine, but the video was choppy, like the frames were dropping. The audio tracks on these DVDs were uncompressed PCM. Anything else (like AC3) would be fine. The issue was that I was using OSS for sound (via /dev/dsp).

The trick here is to use ALSA. Changing the sound output in MythTV to ALSA and undoing the "extra audio buffering" yielded HD playback and smooth DVDs with PCM audio.

So far, I can get the Intel X3100 to perform well with MPEG-2 HD (720p and 1080i) content, DVDs (with greedyhdeint x2) and MPEG-4/AAC video at HD frame sizes but low bitrates. Unfortunately, h.264 video from the HD PVR 1212 with 720p frame sizes at high bitrates (the 7, 10 and 13.5 samples found here) still peg my Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz at 102%+