[mythtv-users] myth & screen saver/screen power management

[Josh White]

I have a question that will require a little back story to properly
frame...here goes:

A while back, I had a frontend running on a G4 eMac running Debian etch.  It
worked great, but when I updated to .22, it was simply too slow, and I had
trouble making the eMac work with the updated version of Debian.  What I've
come to think of as one of the best features of the way this setup worked
was how the screen was handled.  I had this frontend in my bedroom, and
would often fall asleep with a movie or recorded TV playing.  What would
happen in this case was whatever I was playing would finish, and
mythfrontend would fall back to whatever screen I played the file from.
Then 5 or 10 minutes later, the computer would shut off the screen.  When I
upgraded to myth .22, I replaced this machine with a zotac ion machine
running Ubuntu 9.10 (which is wonderful) except, I cannot seem to reproduce
the screen saver/screen power off functionality that I liked in my former
setup.

I've tried setting the screen saver to run, but this of course runs weather
there is video playing or not.

With that said, my question is this:

Is there a way to make myth disable the screen saver/screen power management
when I begin playing a video, and enable it when the video stops?  I guess I
really don't want to stop the power management, just the clock for the power
management.  I'd really like time to stop during playback in terms of the
countdown for judging when the machine is idle.

As I'm not sure what the default behavior is intended to be, I'm not sure if
I have a problem with my setup, or do I simply wish for behavior that wasn't
intended?  My display is an old 19" flat panel display that is capable of
powering down when the computer tells it to (while many HD TV's apparently
cannot).  I know my machine can do this, in my tinkering I've managed to get
to a point where if I reboot the machine with the display on and I don't
immediately operate the machine (say from an SSH session on another machine;
I do not have a keyboard attached to this machine) , I'll walk into the room
hours later to find the display turned off, and I can wake it by pressing a
button on my remote.  I cannot make this happen after a file has finished
playing.  Is there a reasonable solution to my problem?

I suppose a workaround would be to set the screen saver to power off the
screen after 2 hours or so, which is generally longer than anything I watch,
and in the rare case that I do watch something longer than that, and stay
awake, I can always press a button on my remote to wake it again.  Still, I
have to hope there is a more elegant solution.

SO that got a little long, and I realize that turns people off that follow
the list.  For anyone that read this far, thanks, and I'll appreciate any
advice.

- Josh
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