[mythtv] Some bugs, suggestions

[Cedar McKay]

> 1) mythbackend segfaults way too easily. At first I couldn't get it to 
> run at all, because all it did was segfault when I tried to start 
> watching live TV. It turned out there were two problems, both of which 
> caused it to crash horribly with no indication of what is wrong. 1) 
> the directory I told it to write video to had the wrong permissions 
> and was therefore not writable. 2) The vbi device was set to use 
> /dev/vbi but that device didn't exist (it was actually called 
> /dev/vbi0). This last one bring me to another bug...

does it still seg fault now that you have the vbi device and write 
permissions worked out?

>
> 4) Even after running mythfilldatabase to refresh the listings, it 
> didn't delete the no-longer-available channels. I had to do that 
> manually by connecting to mysql.

I think if you re-run setup there is an option to clear the listings.

> 1) There doesn't seem to be any way to change channels and stay in the 
> EPG. Maybe I'm missing a key? (this relates somewhat to #4 as well)
>
> 2) Volume control doesn't work in the EPG screen
>
> 3) I can't find a definitive list of keys/functions for each mode.

keys.txt in the MC directory.
 

>
> 4) It doesn't seem as if the key controls are really oriented towards 
> remote control usage. For example, the arrows are 
> fastforward/rewind/chanup/chandown AND do the menu movement. I'm 
> planning to buy a TiVo remote control (unless anyone has a suggestion 
> for a better one!) on ebay and use that with my system so it would be 
> really nice if the keys were one-function enough to work with a real 
> remote. It makes sense to have multi-use keys on a keyboard, not so 
> much on a remote control where the buttons have specific labeled uses. 
> (so, i'd want the chanup/down keys to always function as 
> chanup/chandown, not menu movement in epg). Perhaps a configurable 
> keyboard binding system would help.. of course, I'd prefer if it just 
> had good bindings by default. :)

I completely disagree. A keyboard has lots and lots of keys, therefore 
it is fine to have lots of buttons that do different things. Remotes 
have limited number of keys, and everyone's remote is different, so I 
would want as much key re-use as possible. Right now there are bindings 
to a lot of specific keys, for instance 'e' goes to edit mode and 'm' 
goes to epg while watching tv. Also as is I control myth without looking 
at the remote b/c I can do most things with 6 buttons. If we seperated 
out functions, for instance channel up down from menu up down for some 
reason I would have to start looking at my remote a lot more to find 
keys. Folks are talking about a popup menu system so you can just hit a 
single "menu" button, and a list of possible actions from any particular 
context would pop up. That would make it possible to do _everything_ 
with up, down, left, right, enter/space, esc and the number buttons. 
That sounds sweet to me. We could keep individual buttons for maniacs 
like you ;-) who need a different remote button for everything.

>
>
> 6) The menu icons seem extraordinarily slow to draw... my computer is 
> an Athlon 1600+, which is plenty fast enough to do live TV even 
> underclocked at 1Ghz, yet the menu interface takes about 2 seconds to 
> draw the options. Can something be done about that?

You have some sort of problem. Draws fast for me.



this should probably move to myth-users now.


Cedar