[mythtv-users] Germans using onlinetvrecorder.com?

[mrwester]

Hi-

I'm wondering if anybody is using this service?  is it legal?  Have you been
able to incorporate into mythtv?  Unfortunately most of the help/forums is
in German, and my command of the language isn't so good.

For those not familiar, (my limited understanding) is that this site lets
one set up an account and then "record" free OTA programming, commercials
included,  from several German TV stations. Once the recording is complete,
a user downloads the show, in an encyrpted format.  In order to "decode",
you must be online and the account info is confirmed by the website.  An
individual account is only allowed to "decode" a show one time and the
resulting file is a mid resolution .wmv file- In addition, you can only
decode shows that you explicitly designated to record.  I'm guessing that
these one decode rules gets them around some personal use vs redistribution
laws.  File download can be via their own dedicated but overwhelmed server
or torrent, but again, while you may be able to download every show
broadcast, you can only decode those which you've specifically recorded.

My wife is German and there are few options here in the USA to obtain
programming from Germany. I've contemplated building a cheap  backend box
and installing at my in-law's house (who live outside of Hamburg) and
configuring some sort of database synchronization over the internet to my
system here, but there are many challenges.  There's nobody really computer
savvy in the village and I only visit 1-2 times/year. In addition, I'd need
to pay for a 2nd sattelite account and internet access at their house so it
becomes cost prohibitive for the amount of german tv programming we'd
actually watch.

I've been recording things using onlinetvrecorder.com for a few days.   The
on-line EPG isn't as good as mythweb, but passable.  Because the system lets
one record multiple streams at once, there are no tuner priority issues.  On
the down side- no option for "live tv" viewing.  However, with time
differences, in the USA we'd rarely think about live tv, and with mythtv,
don't watch live tv anyways.  I can manually download and decode and put
files into my mythvideos directory and view the files, but would at least
like to automate the process.  For our purposes, scheduling
downloads/decoding once a day during low traffic periods is more than
adequate. After that I'd like to be able to add autoexpire options to
mythvideo.  And the icing on the cake would be to allow scheduling through
epg data within mythtv, and importing the programs into the recordings
database- complete with commercial flagging capacity.  There's a linux
version of the decoder available.

As mentioned, I'd just like to automate the process of getting the programs
into mythtv- and the tools may already be out there, but I'm not finding
them with my limited knowledge of the german language.  I've got both a
windows server as well as my mythtv backend running 24/7 so options in
either platform are welcome- but obviously linux would  be my 1st choice.
If I spark some ideas for simple plugin or mythtv features for the future
that's good too.  Unfortunately, I'm a biologist not a programmer and I
think incorporation into mythtv will be best left to someone who knows what
they're doing.  Thanks, for any help that anyone can give.

Mike
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20060215/2010aa5e/attachment.htm