[mythtv-users] What major features are planned for 0.27?

Mark Greenwood fatgerman at gmail.com
Wed Nov 21 15:10:02 UTC 2012


On Wednesday 21 Nov 2012 10:57:07 Mike Perkins wrote:
> On 20/11/12 17:42, Mark Greenwood wrote:
> > On Tuesday 20 Nov 2012 10:24:39 Mark wrote:
> >> On 2012-11-20 10:22 AM, Mark Greenwood wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday 20 Nov 2012 10:17:10 Mark wrote:
> >>>> On 2012-11-20 9:43 AM, Mark Greenwood wrote:
> >>>>> On Tuesday 20 Nov 2012 10:21:56 Michael T. Dean wrote:
> >>>>>> On 11/20/2012 02:05 AM, Phill Edwards wrote:
> >>>>>>>> I have to ask whether it's time for the folks interested in
> >>>>>>>> coding the frontend bits to give up on the Myth frontend as
> >>>>>>>> it's own stand-alone app (along with all of it's failing bits)
> >>>>>>>> and instead take the working-really-well bits and provide XBMC
> >>>>>>>> with first class Myth playback capabilities.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I love mythfrontend and I find it very disappointing that people
> >>>>>>> want to get rid of it as I don't think whatever replaces it will
> >>>>>>> be as good for TV recording playback. Sure XBMC looks good but I
> >>>>>>> think features come first.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>> And, FWIW, mythfrontend can look /very/ good, too--just requires
> >>>>>> some people to actually help with theming it (rather than just
> >>>>>> saying that XBMC is better and recommending we drop
> >>>>>> mythfrontend)...
> >>>>>>
> >>>>> Yes, the MythMediaStream theme looks really good, but it does use up
> >>>>> a shedload of RAM. IMO all the XBMC themes look great, they're easy
> >>>>> to navigate, and seem to use far less memory - which is significant
> >>>>> for many who run a frontend on a small PC.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> But it's not al about eye candy. I've been experimenting with XMBC as
> >>>>> a frontend and the setup is SO much simpler - I haven't had to faff
> >>>>> with sysctl.conf, udev rules, (for RTC timing) or even the dreaded
> >>>>> LIRC. It all just worked (apart from the usual type of faffing with
> >>>>> xorg.conf). And A/V sync is spot on with all sources, including TV -
> >>>>> which it wasn't with mythtv 0.26.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I'm sure mythfrontend is extremely capable (I know it is, I went to
> >>>>> the trouble of setting it up) but using XBMC gives me more beer time.
> >>>>> I think that perhaps when people say 'XBMC is better' they might mean
> >>>>> 'I managed to get XBMC to work so I'm using it because I gave up on
> >>>>> mythfrontend after 3 days'.
> >>>>>
> >>>> Pardon the slightly off topic. There is no xbmc plugin for mythtv 26 is
> >>>> there? I would like to look at it if so.
> >>> No but there is a mythtv plugin for xbmc, which I think is what you want.
> >>> It allows you to use xmbc as a frontend for your mythtv backend. It is,
> >>> however, experimental and currently only works with the development
> >>> version of xbmc and the add-on itself has to be built from source. It's
> >>> all on the xbmc downloads page if you're interested. It's what I'm now
> >>> using as my main frontend.
> >>>
> >> Very interesting.  I will try that. Why do you use that rather than
> >> mythfrontend? Better experience, performance?
> >
> > I have been struggling for several days to get A/V sync correct in
> > mythfrontend 0.26 - my movies were OK but the sound on TV was lagging behind
> > sufficiently for me to notice. So I tried XBMC to see if it was better, and
> > it was. It still took some effort and reading of the XMBC wiki to get my
> > xorg.conf set up correctly for all refresh rates (it's slightly different to
> > the one I needed for mythtv) but now I've done it everything plays fine. I
> > also find the whole layout of the xbmc gui more freindly, and as I've
> > mentioned there are so many fewer options that I'm not afraid of touching
> > anything.
> >
> If it is just the menu layout of XBMC that you prefer, why don't you just write
> an XBMC-like theme and contribute it to mythtv-themes?
> 
> 
That's a good point, but it's not just the appearance, it's the whole layout and form of it, especially around the preferences. I don't know anything about mythtv them coding, but I'd assume there would need to be a pretty fundamental change simply to the number and naming of the options before it could work anything like xbmc does.

One thing that could be contributed though, and I don't know how easy/hard this would be but with pointers I'd be prepared to look into it, would be to make mythtv understand the multimedia keycodes sent by IR remotes that are handled by the kernel's devinput interface (eg KEY_PLAY, KEY_FASTFORWARD etc). Xbmc understands these natively and means I didn't have to go through the trauma of setting up lirc.

Mark



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