Difference between revisions of "Feature Wishlist"

Revision as of 21:33, 15 March 2006

Before making any feature requests to the MythTV developers, one first needs to understand the most basic truth about MythTV: "MythTV is a project by developers, for developers." If you look at things in that light, comments that get made by developers to users who submit feature requests ("Sounds good; I look forward to your patch") make a whole lot more sense.

The developers of MythTV work for free (obviously), in their spare time. Most/all of them write software for a living, where they work all day long on things that other people want them to work on. When they work on Myth they focus on what's important to them. A feature gets implemented because a developer wants it bad enough to spend his spare time writing it and testing it, and believes in it strongly enough to defend it from the other developers (which helps to avoid the feature creep common in some projects). Bugs, especially crash bugs, get worked on by all of the devs as they encounter them as those impact everyone.

That's not to say that the users don't matter, or that the developers never implement something that comes from a user. It's just that unless a developer says either "why didn't I think of that" or "I could knock that out in a couple hours" it will be a much lower priority.

Requests from people who have contributed back to the project in some way carry a LOT more weight. Developers by and large tend to be rather blunt. People often mistake being terse and to the point for being insulting. Then they start a flame war on the mailing list (which is pretty much certain death for a feature request) all because a developer either a) didn't take 3 paragraphs to tell them "I'm not going to work on this" or they think that the developer should drop whatever they're doing because *they* want it done. A lot of the devs are a bit defensive when it comes to requests, largely due to previous bad experiences.

And, finally, remember this: if there's something you want badly enough, you can always offer to pay someone to do it.

Editor's note: Even moreso than on most pages, if you add a note here that a wishlist item is now available or in process, please note which version that information applies to ('added in 0.19', for example). Remember: wiki pages live forever. --Baylink 17:00, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

How to make a suggestion

If you've got an idea for a feature that you'd like to see implemented here's some guidelines for submitting it:

• Before anything else, check the Current Version release notes to make sure it's not already in there (yes, this happens).
• Clearly indicate that it's a request, not a demand.
• Indicate your understanding that code speaks louder than words. (i.e. "If I could I'd write up a patch that does this but I'm not a dev")
• Be very clear with how you envision your idea working. The more details you have in your request the better chance you have hitting that magical "knock it out in a couple of hours" mark.
• Make sure you're not repeating a previous request. (search the mailing list archives)
• Do NOT be offended if a developer responds with "sounds good; I look forward to your patch".
• Requests from people who have contributed back to the project in some way carry a LOT more weight.

In Development

There are many items which are in active development (people are writing code). Some of them are listed below, and others at the developers' Trac wiki page.

• Share MythVideo/MythMusic-files between all frontends (via backend?), Thor is working on this so called MFD/MFE feature. It is planned to go into 0.16 (but wasn't) Easily accomplished with NFS
• Add an option to play FM-radio through a FM tuner (NOTE: A patch exists http://mythextra.napsi.net/mythFM.html but there's current less development on that)
• A method to allow review of email on a POP3 server. No need to download the email, just browse what is there and read/delete/etc. in work: http://mythextra.napsi.net/
• Videotext/Teletext for PVR250/350/500 and digital TV-Cards
• Mouse support. Would make it possible to use a touch screen to control MythTv. - option added

Backend Addons

See Feature Wishlist (Backend Addons).

Frontend Addons

See Feature Wishlist (Frontend Addons)

Plugin Addons (to existing Plugins)

See Feature Wishlist (Plugin Addons)

New Plugins

• MythAlarm
• MythCommander. It would be great to have an Filemanager like Midnight Commander. And it would be nice if you could not only move and rename files but also unrar/zip/tar them.
• Burn DVDs/(S)VCDs from within MythTV
• Add an ebay module to watch and update active bids
• Integrate MythBurn into main MythTV packages
• support for blog entries from inside of myth - provide hotkey that will open a quick form to add an entry to blogger or other common blog. Included in the posting would be the information about the show being watched at the moment - would be ideal to have a transparent overlay window for text entry so blog entry could be posted while still wathcing TV - useful to blog about a debate or talk show
• A convenient way to comment on movies in IMDB after watching them. I.E. At the end of watching a MOVIE, add an option to the delete menu to jump to IMDB "post a review" for this movie (or a link to tvtome to comment on an episode of a series?)
• Add local movie showtimes module
• Add a Test Screen to help adjust TV colors correctly to view MythTV at the very best -- also add test sound effects for stereo, 5+1 sounds, etc sound debugging. This would be a nice addition to setup in myth. -- possibly lprof-1.09 tools
• Add an "Export Recordings" mode under "Manage Recordings" that interfaces with mkmovie, nuvexport and nuv2avi in some integrated fashion so that TV recordings could easily be exported from MythTV without dropping to the commandline to do so.
• IM (AIM, MSN and Yahoo)
• Music Play Daemon (mpd) Support.
• X10 Support
• Integrate myth2iPod, 2 into mythtv plugins package
• Mythbuster - A plugin similiar to Mythflix that integrates into Blockbuster On-line instead of Netflix. May be limited to Blockbuster's technology and lack of RSS.

Ideas with response

• Non-time shifting mode for watching regular TV, would be a bit difficult since the frontend/backend split, but might be possible when both are on the same machine. You could still draw the OSD if you would want.

this defeats the purpose of a PVR, add a menu item to launch a non-buffering tv program in place of Myths "watch tv" item - This is better stated as a request for "fast channel changing" or "no 2 second delay". Current workaround is to switch channel changing behavior to "browse mode", but actually having "fast channel changing" would really help new user acceptance of mythtv.

• Peer-to-peer sharing of shows with friends who also use MythTV {2 = 3}

uhm... can you spell l-a-w-s-u-i-t?) NEVER going to happen with core Myth

• Auto update, or update notification {2} (update notification should be feasable, IMHO - HenkPoley)

Very distro dependant, apt-get solves 99% of the problem for most folks (those who are *using* packages, maybe... --BayLink)

• Action sound, a short confirmation 'blip' to say that a keypress was received and is 'being processed'

This is difficult to achieve without impelemting and requring all audio devices to be routed through an ALSA mixer (which has it's own issues at the moment) --- As a work around, look on the backend setup screen. There is a config option for "Execute command when key pressed" (or something like thing) that you can configure to play a sound

Already implemented

• playlist queue - ability to manage a queue of recorded programs or videos for sequential playback
• Ajax Based Mythweb for Speed up and more interactivity
• Ability to mask Media Library entries based on entering PIN to identify user. e.g. Kids can not see anything in a specific program group.

Unsorted

With reference to website / mailing list

• Type number and jump to channel in EPG, when you have hundreds of channels
• View count, especially useful if stored per user, to see if everyone has already seen the recording - would be nice to have an addition to options menu for "mark as seen by:" with submenu for defined viewers. This would really help in determining when shows can be deleted. Also see this suggestion for some further refinements. If programs are flagged with who wants to see them, if you tell myth who is in the room, myth can present a list of programs those people want to see, ordered by the number of people present who want to see it.
• a 'digest' button that will bring up a scene index, possibly automated by grabbing a frame every X minutes, or by a framedump tool similar to the commercial cutter.
• Show what recording profile were used to record a show, record profiles can change over time, so maybe this should fall back to displaying just the settings used. This exists to some extent you can see what profile was used but not what the settings are. Select "edit recording schedule" from the menu in the view recordings screen
• Jump to quote from closed captioning, so you can for example have a search for 'weather' and jump to the weather forecast in today's news broadcast.
• BabyCam / security cam via PiP, put a webcam in the baby's room and have MythTV display it via PiP. Might also be usefull together with the mentioned Motion software to see if someone at your doorbell. MythPhone maybe?
• Automatic record/playback tweaking
• Use RendezVous to let frontend and backend autodiscover each other
• Have MythTV emulate a standard uPnP "Media Server" to take advantage of "media center extender" hardware- See thread - one example: CyberMedia Gate

Without reference to website / mailing list

• Ability to automaticly change Xine/MPlayer (etc.) keybindings file when you change MythTV hotkeys (seems difficult to me - HenkPoley). Or just a webpage with Xine/MPlayer configs that conform to MythTV default keybindings.

• Add option to limit the time length or filesize of recordings. Long length MythTV recordings would automatically span multiple files similar to film rolls. Allows TV marathons, sporting events, etc to be broken up into manageable pieces.