[mythtv] [RFC] MythNews Multimedia Support

[Brad DerManouelian]

On Nov 9, 2006, at 9:49 AM, Kevin Kuphal wrote:

> I have been working recently to patch MythNews to support  
> multimedia aspects of RSS.  So far I have added
>
> * Support for display of <image> tag on a feed including caching  
> image locally
> * Improved HTML parsing of descriptions by not stripping everything  
> in tags or CDATA sections
> * Support for display of <media:thumbnail> tag on an article
> * Launching mplayer for streaming <enclosure> and <media:player>  
> tags (only tested with video)
> * Added video sources for the below video sites
>
> Right now it works well enough to display video from YouTube,  
> Google Video, G4TV and Cnet TV.  With a recent version of mplayer  
> the streaming works.
> Issues:
>
> * Sometimes mplayer takes a long time to set up streaming and I  
> don't know a good way to check the status of a shelled command  
> (help here would be appreciated) to either show information about  
> it or kill it if it hangs
> * The Internal player can play the files just fine if downloaded  
> but I don't know how to use it to stream from HTTP sources
>
> Future:
>
> * Testing both audio and video enclosures
> * Graphical indicators on the feed display of the presence of an  
> enclosure and it's type
> * Dynamic thumbnail display that can change height/width to handle  
> different thumbnail sizes
> * Subscription to feeds so that enclosures can be downloaded  
> locally for playback instead of streaming (I could use some advice  
> here as well.  Should this be integrated to "Watch Recordings" or  
> done only via MythNews where it just locally plays instead of  
> streams if available).
>
> I'd love some comments on this patch.  It seems a very natural  
> extension to MythNews and with the popularity of podcasts and  
> services like YouTube it should be a nice enhancement.
>
> Thanks,
> Kevin

This sounds very cool, but I doubt it will be considered for  
inclusion due to the dependency on mplayer. This is why mythstream  
was never included as an "official" plugin. If you could get it to  
work with the Internal video player or create a config for which  
external player to use for that content, you'd have a better shot of  
getting it in.

-Brad