[mythtv-users] Some notes on Google TV

[Brad Templeton]

On 11/15/2010 11:44 AM, Travis Tabbal wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Brad Templeton 
> <brad+myth at templetons.com <mailto:brad%2Bmyth at templetons.com>> wrote:
>
>     That's a bit of work.  While Android is linux based, android apps
>     are JVM based, only  a very few blessed apps (like the web browser
>     etc.) get to be in C.      So it means writing a frontend in a
>     language that compiles to Java.    You aren't going to write your
>     video playback in java, but I have to presume the GTV platform,
>     which I have not examined, has APIs to stream videos in the GTV
>     way (including their OSD stuff etc.)
>
>
> That's not entirely correct. You can write apps in C on Android, you 
> need Java for the UI, but they provided an NDK for that. It's 
> basically JNI. So if you have a clean C library you can easily attach 
> a Java UI to it with those tools. It does lock you to the hardware, 
> but as they are mostly ARM right now, that's not so bad. And you could 
> include JNI libraries for other platforms if you needed to. I'm not 
> sure it's really worth it, but if GTV takes off, it might be a nice 
> thing to have around. For myself, GTV doesn't seem to offer anything I 
> can't do with Myth, that I care about anyway. Some of the streaming 
> stuff is mildly interesting, but I get issues streaming on my internet 
> connection. I'd rather do downloads/recordings/rips.
>
>
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>    
Thanks for the correction on the C apps.

I think it is true right now that there is not much more in GTV than 
Myth, but I think, unless Google fails at this, that this will change 
quite a bit as Android apps are written for the GTV and an app ecology 
develops.  Rumours are of a lot of TV and STB vendors integrating GTV.

However, there is still a list of things in GTV that Myth does not do 
that make it interesting.  To sum them up:

a) Play of various for-pay streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon 
VOD etc.
b) Access to data from some cable/sat STB/DVRs, including listings data, 
current stored recordings
c) Ability to control said STB/DVRs both to queue recordings, play 
recordings and issue remote control commands over IP
d) Ability to do pass-through of HDMI video streams with modification, 
including placing OSD on top of stream, zooming/PIP etc.
e) Integrated search over may sources of video and audio
f) Integrated queue combining recordings and RSS videocast feeds
g) Better integration with web browser, with web pages having ability to 
offer feeds, and interact with GTV.

E, F and G can be added to MythTV.   I think so can B and C.   D may be 
difficult and A would require linux players for these pay services.

However, my main thought is that this is just the beginning, and to 
judge GTV at present would be like judging the initial Android phones or 
iPhones before their app stores arrived.
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