[mythtv] Ideas for MythMusic rewrite

[Peter Buelow]

On 1/7/2010 7:17 AM, David Watkins wrote:
> 2010/1/7 Owen<manicmoose at gmail.com>:
>    
>> 2010/1/7 Robert Pfeifer<rpfeifer.public at gmail.com>
>>      
>>> I use the remote for everything. My MythTV unit does not have a
>>> keyboard, and I do not want to have to boot up a separate PC every time
>>> I wish to edit the playlist. Please continue to make all functionality
>>> available via the remote control.
>>>        
>>
>> +1
>>      
>
> Me too
>
> ...and I'd want to be able to select tracks and existing playlists
> only using the LCD display, rather than having to turn my TV on.
>
> At the moment this is possible, though you can get stranded in some of
> the menus because  they don't appear on the LCD. (eg. Exit / Stop
> Playing / Keep Playing)
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>    
I've been thinking about this for a while, and why can't MythMusic look 
more like a table, similar to iTunes (sorry if that offends anyone, but 
it's very simple to use). Then, it should be possible to 
create/use/manage playlists with just the arrows, OK, Menu, and D (for 
Delete). Easy remote usage, and it's an interface that should work well 
on many TV's, especially large wide screen TV's which are becoming much 
more the standard. This also makes it possible to use the player buttons 
as indicated by Kris, which I'm very much in favor of. I never really 
understood why choosing music had to be difficult with MythMusic, nor 
why there had to be both a player UI and a UI for selecting music. How 
this would work with a second LCD type interface is probably just a 
simple UI question to answer as well.

I'd actually like to get up to speed on plugins because I'm newly 
unemployed, and now will have a bit of time on my hands. I assume that 
much of the existing code base could be reused, with most of the effort 
going into creating a new UI. However, there are a couple of other 
projects that may trump such an effort. Also, if anyone is interested, I 
did rough up a way to create and interact with playlists (my biggest 
MythMusic pet peeve). However, it's a standalone Qt application that 
directly interacts with the the Myth database, not using any API's (not 
the safest way to do this, but I got it done over the course of a few 
days). Anyway, if anyone is interested, it can be downloaded from 
https://secure.northseminary.net/projects/mythplaylist.

-Pete B