Upgrade to Mythtv 0.19 (smooth)

I upgraded to version 0.19 of MythTV last weekend, and here is my takeaway. The upgrade went very smoothly, I have a frontend running FC3 (apt) and a backend running FC4 (yum), and both went well. I was a bit disappointed that I had to update them simultaneously as once I updated the frontend, it would no longer connect to the backend until I updated it.

To my surprise, once I finished the upgrade, I went into the recorded shows section, and for the first time, was able to playback all of my HD content; 1080i, 720p, everything, smooth as silk. skip forward, back, seeking, all worked flawlessly. This simple new ability has changed everything for me. I now no longer have to transcode all of my shows and view them in MythVideo.

The first thing I wondered was, now that I’m not transcoding my shows, how does mythtranscode work? At first it appears that I’m able to transcode shows automatically, but I’m definitely going to have to fiddle with the settings to get satisfactory results.