[mythtv] LAME is mandatory?

[Colin Guthrie]

Hi,

I am just updating Mandriva packages for 0.21 so that we can push that
out with our next release.

I've updated an old patch we had to make LAME optional for MythMusic
(http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/4809), but have just come across the
fact that LAME appears to be mandatory for mythtv now (don't know how I
missed that before - probably because the configure script has a
"--enable-mp3lame [default=no]" line in it's help output... I trusted it!)

Can I ask if anyone has any thoughts on this? We will not be able to
ship MythTV in Mandriva due to patent issues relating to MP3 encoding
support. (it will still be possible to ship it in or PLF repositories
with MP3 encoding enabled). I'd imagine other distros will have similar
problems.

A fellow Mandriva dev, Anssi Hannula, submited a ticket to make lame
optional about a year ago, but it has bitrotted somewhat as it was
rather unceremoniously closed as WONTFIX. With a comment that says there
is no need.

http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/3233

Do any devs think this is actually an important issue? If so I will
update the patch, but I'm not going to bother doing this is it's not
going to get upstream. I'll just have to ship MythTV 0.20 in Mandriva
which would be a real shame for our MythTV lovers.

I hope it is possible to make LAME optional in mythtv as this would be a
real step back :(

Col

-- 

+------------------------+
|     Colin Guthrie      |
+------------------------+
| myth(at)colin.guthr.ie |
| http://colin.guthr.ie/ |
+------------------------+