[mythtv-users] Small, low cost MythTV clients...

[Brad Templeton]

On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 01:31:30PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
> 
> On May 3, 2007, at 1:06 PM, Brad Templeton wrote:
> 
> > So it seems it would be very smart for these vendors to sponsor  
> > porting
> > of Mythfrontend to their boxes.   They would sell a lot of boxes.   
> > I would
> > buy one -- simply because I expect they're low power and would save me
> > a lot of money.
> 
> I don't see that working out -- mainly because there's no backwards  
> compatibility in the Myth protocol, so frontends and backends have to  
> be upgraded in lock-step.  Every time you upgraded your backend you'd  
> need a firmware upgrade for the box.
> 
Yes.   Well, I've expressed my sentiment about the lack of compatibility
in the protocol before.  I think it's not just possible but not that difficult
to design extensible protocols, but since I'm not doing that code I can't
complain too much.  (I just get annoyed since I compile my backends from
the latest svn and it always means I can't just quickly turn any system into
a frontend by installing packages, and it makes independent frontend projects
like one for these machines, or for windows, harder.)

Of course, if these vendors did decide to promote mythfrontend running
on their boxes, I am sure the myth developers would keep them up to date
with new releases for each new protocol, but that's not something ordinary
users want to fuss with.   Still, at $200 for a nice, quiet, trivial to set up
HD frontend I think we would all sell our existing frontends on eBay very
quickly.   (Especially since I presume it would be a full linux box with
shell, firefox and other app access, which I do enjoy having on my HDTV.)

At this point HDTVs have dropped to the price that it's getting silly to
build Myth boxes that cost hundreds of dollars just for SDTV anyway.