[mythtv-users] Re: EFF calls for developers for MythTV

[J. Donavan Stanley]

Francois Gouget wrote:

> * Improving and debugging the ivtv drivers would help a lot. For me
>that was the hardest part to set up. In particular I was unable to guess
>what to specify for the tuner field and only succeeded after reverting
>to 0.1.10-pre2-ck64f and copy/pasting the settings of a fellow French
>guy.
>
> * Simplifying the ivtv driver setup would help a lot too. For my
>PVR-350 there are 6 modules involved and I need to specify the TV
>standard 4 times, sometimes claiming it is SECAM, sometimes claiming it
>is PAL! I also have to specify my tuner type twice. And after that I
>still need to run commands to set the standard to SECAM!
>  
>

While it's true the setup of those cards could be easier, that's a 
driver issue unrelated to mythtv.  Would you say that a game needed to 
be made better because you had problems installing the video card you 
bought to play it with?

> * When I'm watching a show, the Vol- and Vol+ keys on my remote control
>don't change the volume as one would expect. Instead they cause the show
>to skip forward or backwards. It's certainly not intuitive and fixable.
>  
>
It certainly *is* fixable.  You should either a) Fix the config for your 
remote so it send the proper keys for val up and vol down or b) Change 
the keybinding (using mythweb) so that they match what your remote is 
sending.


> * I initially had a lot of trouble finding where the Transcoders
>configuration is located. Now I know but I find it non-intuitive.
>  
>
One would expect that you'd at least have gone into the recording 
profiles at *least* once while setting up your machine and had seen it.

> * I believe transcoding is an area where usability can really be
>improved a lot. It makes sense to have some standard profiles. But
>there are some shows I'd like to transcode so they will fit on CD and
>others I'd like to compress more. So it's weird to me that the
>transcoding settings are entirely determined by the format of the
>source video which for me is always MPEG2.
>   (Now, maybe transocding is just meant to deal with cards that don't
>do hardware encoding and I'm trying to use it incorrectly)
>  
>

It's designed to save you space on your hard drive. 

> * There are recipies around for preparing shows to put them on DVD. But
>this has to be done outside of MythTV and it not really obvious. Some
>PVR boxes in France include a DVD writer and can save shows to DVD, no
>fuss there. So it would be nice to have similar functionality in MythTV.
>  
>
There's been at least one posting of a DVD burner app that automates all 
of this and can be used by remote.


> * There's an aspect of the recording configuration which I find
>confusing too. I can easily get a list of the specific instances of
>shows that have been recorded. I can also go into the EPG and schedule
>new stuff to be recorded. But how do I get to MythTV's list of things to
>record, similar to a VCR's list of 8 timeslots to record.  Apparently
>the trick is to go to the 'Recording Priorities' screen.  And that will
>even let me remove stuff from that list though it's really not obvious
>based on the name.
>  
>
Look at "resolve conflicts", in my alt menu theme this has been changed 
to "view upcoming".

>   - Xavier Hervy reported on this list that MythVideo fails to
>correctly display and play files containing accents and I could confirm
>that (but accents work fine in MythTV proper)
>  
>
However MythVideo show international characters just fine for some 
folks.  I'm working with Xavier now to try to get to the bottom of things.

>   - If I switch the GUI from French to English and go to 'Watch
>Recordings' I get a 'No recordings available' because it's looking for a
>category called 'Tous programmes'. It's a bit unnerving and switching
>the GUI language should not cause such problems.
>  
>
That shouldn't be the case... It should ALWAYS look for "All programs" 
and only display the translated name.  Have you put this into bugzilla?

> * Better integration between Myth modules: when using the TV part I can
>control the volume using [ ] and \, but that doesn't work in MythVideo.
>  
>
Mythvideo uses other apps to play videos so how the keys are configured 
is really up to the user.  I know I'd not be happy with myth if it 
changed the configs of my apps out from under me.