[mythtv-users] remote frontend on a Mac

[Christopher Kerr]

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 11:57 PM, lee <lee at yun.yagibdah.de> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 10:29:09AM +0000, Simon Hobson wrote:
>> lee wrote:
>>
>> > > You do it pretty much the same way you do under Linux. It works just
>> >> fine on both my Mac Mini and MacBook Pro under Mac OS X.
>> >
>> >It doesn't work the same way. The settings are totally messed up ---
>> >apparently mythtv is not able to handle multiple users and multiple
>> >frontends.
>>
>> Apparently it can - at least it does for most users. The fact that
>> YOUR installation isn't working correctly doesn't mean that the the
>> source package is broken.
>
> Then why is it unusably slow? The Mac sucks, but not that bad.
>
>> > > > 7.) the recordings of one user are available to the remote frontend
>> >> > and thus to another user
>> >>
>> >> Huh? What's the problem here?
>> >
>> >It's another user, but mythtv doesn't seem to understand that.
>>
>> Correct - MythTV doesn't deal with 'users', and since it's not a
>> designed in part of the system, it's not broken. That may not be
>> what YOU want, but it's how the system is designed.
>
> Well, then it's broken by design --- or the design is broken.
>
>> OK, turn that around, how do you prevent another user changing the
>> timer settings on your VCR ? Or changing the tape and overwriting
>> your recordings ? Or a very common one, changing channels on the Sky
>> box when you've left it on a specific channel to record on the VCR
>> later ?
>
> You mean an old fashioned video recorder that can play tapes and
> record to tapes? I can program computers, but I never found out how to
> program one of those.
>
> What is a sky box? If you mean a satellite receiver, there was no
> sattelite TV when those tape recorders were around. There were three
> TV stations you could receive with your TV antenna, and the recorders
> had tuners built in to receive them, and that was all. They always had
> problems with what you wanted to record not starting/ending at the
> specified times.
>
> With an external satellite receiver, these recorders became totally
> absurd because they couldn't control the satellite receiver, and it
> became too complicated to connect things. I've always considered them
> as obsolete because they never really worked.
>
>> >And how could you have remote frontends when they all use the same
>> >settings? You would be required to have identical hard- and software
>> >for all the frontends.
>>
>> They don't have to have the same settings.
>
> So I need to manually put different settings for different frontends
> into the database? I couldn't really try anything out because it was
> too slow on the Mac to use it. When you have to wait a few minutes for
> something to happen every time you're trying to do something and when
> you can just look at eventual error messages about communiction
> problems that might come up because it is unknown what rights the
> database user the remote frontend uses needs, there isn't much you
> could do but conclude that it doesn't work.

No idea what you're talking about here - settings made on one frontend
(through the Setup menu's) apply only to that frontend, but ALWAYS to
that frontend regardless of user logins etc.

> What I'm looking for is a convenient way to use the TV card from
> different computers --- it would even suffice if it was possible to
> set up recordings from different computers. That requires the
> possibility of having multiple users --- and a frontend that does tell
> a user something like "hey, you can't record this because there is
> another recording set up already" the very moment the user tries to
> set up the recording. In such cases, the users can talk to each other
> and figure out what to do about it --- but the way it is, the frontend
> doesn't even have users, and it doesn't even tell anyone that setting
> up a recording isn't possible because there's another recording
> already planned.

Well, it does, just not directly. If you check the listings after
scheduling a recording, you'll see that one of them is listed as
"Conflicting". These conficts can be resolved manually, or they can be
partially solved automatically by setting up recording priorities -
for instance, you might choose to bump the priority up a few steps so
that shows on Channel X will always be recorded in preference to shows
on Channel Y, or, for recurring recording rules (ie. series), so that
"Top Gear" will always record in preference to "Pride and Prejudice".

I agree that a more direct warning should be displayed when the rule is created.

I'm not sure, but I think it may be a peculiarity of the dominance of
Cable TV in the USA - so far as I can gather from this list, an
episode of a given show is likely to be repeated several times during
the week, so missing one opportunity to record it doesn't seem to be
an issue to many users. (NOTE: I am not one of these users, and here,
using Australian Free-to-air broadcast TV, this doesn't apply at all -
repeats in the same year are practically non-existant. Kindly correct
me if I'm barking up the wrong tree).

- Chris