[mythtv-users] prismiq and mythtv

[Robert Lippmann]

hi all,

i've been doing open source development for the prismiq MP (they've been
more open now), and after some side projects, i want to get back to what i
originally wanted to do, namely use a linux backend with mythTV for record,
and playback on the prismiq.  using mythTVs gui would be nice because,
frankly, the prismiq GUI is horrible.

i've been noodling this for some time now, and not being familiar with the
mythTV internals have been wondering how to proceed.

basically, the box is a low powered MIPS based linux box, with a hardware
mpeg2 decoder.  it runs Qt/Embedded basically just for it's GUI, and has a
process (which can be remote contolled by telneting to a port and giving
certain ascii commands) that deals with calling the video server and
requesting streams.  non-mpeg2 streams on the server side are transcoded via
a plugin, which uses ffmpeg to convert to mpeg1 audio/video streams.

bearing this in mind, i think this is what needs to be done:
1) build mythfrontend on the player (MIPS box), but modify the point in the
code where it actually initiates audio/video playback to make a call to the
process on the MIPS box to just request the stream.  where would i look in
the source to do this?
2) on the linux backend, i don't think i need to do much except for add cron
jobs to tell the server that the file is available.  as i believe mythtv
uses cron jobs for scheduling anyway, this shouldn't be a hardship (the
linux version uses perl scripts to locate content).

does this sound doable/difficult?

other questions i have are:

why isn't ffmpeg used more (particularly for mythmusic)?

what can i remove from mythfrontend since it won't be actually doing any
playing (just sending commands).  i only have 16mb of flash, so size is
important.

any other issues anyone can think of...

thanks in advance,
rob