[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #7650: Use libmythui to draw the OSD

[Stuart Morgan]

On Tuesday 19 Jan 2010 12:12:15 Doug Larrick wrote:
> FYI realtime priority of the video thread is absolutely essential for
> smooth playback on my systems (Core2Duo, Intel graphics), especially if
> any background activity (notably commercial scanning) is going on.  In
> plain old XVideo output, the video thread is responsible for displaying
> each frame at the correct time, with only minimal help from the
> hardware.  If the scheduler calls it late, we miss a frame.

The question is do we continue to support all possible combinations of 
hardware, older hardware especially, forever. Especially when that support 
complicates the code, and as in this case, the setting causes as many problems 
as it fixes.

We've not made any call yet on Realtime priority threads, so I don't want to 
cause a backlash for something that hasn't even happened. What I'd like to do 
is put forward an argument.

There is a prevailing thought amongst linux users that software on the 
platform should maintain backwards compatibility with all hardware going back 
twenty years, there are still people out there running the latest distros on 
their 286s and they believe that's their given right, but that thinking just 
results in code which is considerably larger and harder to maintain. I think 
we're managing to shake off that attachment with MythTV, in recent months 
we've eliminated PVR-350 output support, XBox LED support, phone support (in 
the form of mythphone) and many settings implemented to help those on machines 
with low processing power. Going forward MythTV will be a tighter, leaner and 
much more user-friendly application as a result of these changes.

So where does that leave users of old hardware? Well the point is that they 
are no worse off, there is no requirement to keep up with the latest version 
of MythTV (or distro), they can continue to use the same version for as long 
as they want. We can't promise to offer support for old versions, but that's 
no different to a commercial product and they get to charge you for it!

But why!? Users want MythTV to keep pace with other media centres, in 
particular those from the likes of Microsoft and Apple. We simply can't drive 
forward it we have to keep one foot in the past, Microsoft isn't hamstrung by 
the need to support old hardware or operating systems, all of their products 
come with minimum/recommend specs. Apple have things very easy, they only have 
to make their software work for a very narrow combination of hardware. MythTV 
on the other hand has to support hundreds of hardware combinations, of all 
ages, across four platforms and dozens of platform versions/distributions. 
Something has to give eventually.

-- 
Stuart Morgan