[mythtv-users] WISH: "Surf Mode" like ATI Media Center

[Jerome Yuzyk]

On Tuesday 31 October 2006 17:46, f-myth-users at media.mit.edu wrote:
>     Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 17:59:38 -0600
>     From: Kevin Kuphal <kuphal at dls.net>
>
>     To me it sounds like a holdover from pre-program guide days.  Why
> watch 100 images that change every few seconds when you can just look at
> the program guide to see what is on (with descriptions)?
>
> I think the original poster also liked the eye candy aspect of it;
> a poor man's "cable company control room wall of monitors", perhaps.

That is true - on my old box I'd leave it on as late-night wallpaper. And 
you know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words...

> Myself, I'm considering whipping up something like this as a
> diagnostic aid, though without the "refresh all the time" and
> "interactivity" parts.  My sources often move channels around without
> keeping Zap2It properly in the loop, transmit black video, flake out
> and transmit screensaver-like things from the headend saying "No
> Video", occasionally reset the cable box so it -claims- it's on one
> channel but is in reality on some completely random channel, and a
> variety of other misbehavior.  It'd be convenient to have a little
> display that gets updated every so often with a matrix of all the
> channels on it; that way, I can spot something going bad long in

For diagnostic purposes, it would also be handy to indicate with each 
thumbnail the signal strength, perhaps with a thin bar under each image or 
a green-yellow-red border.