Difference between revisions of "Feature Wishlist (Frontend Addons)"

Revision as of 21:47, 15 March 2006

This articles represents a subsection of the Feature Wishlist.

Frontend Addons

General

• make screenshot
• Key to switch between windowed and full screen mode
• MythTheme plugin for downloading Themes and install it from an directory of all themes
• On screen help. Press F1 and it tells you what keys do what at that point in time. Also tells you more about each function. ?How does this work with Remotes? --I'm planning on tackling this as my first bit of mythdev :) --DavidGreaves Try pressing "1" on your remote
• Screensaver for widescreen plasma/rear-projection TVs, to avoid burn-in when displaying 4:3 content --Anaerin XScreensaver support is in Myth, all you need do is install it in your box
• Implement a frontend gui that is based on xosd for text display and display on top of xscreensaver modules running on root window - this would allow for cool 3d backgrounds in the mythtv frontend

there is a new GUI based on OpenGL in CVS ...

• Add default ifconfig output to the System Status area of the Information Center
• Add ability to change the OSD theme from mythfrontend (using the same appearance setup area as current theme picker)

Menu Mode

• A clock in the menu system (Maybe available with 0.20 when the new UI is used which allow animations...)
• X10 Home Automation, or you could read this as a request to add a basic menu editing GUI, to add program start buttons for example
• Draw a line to seperate days in recording menus
• Some new hotkeys in recording menus
• add "smooth scroll" option to OSD Program Guide for horizontal and vertical scroll
• Include the free Vera fonts in MythTV
• Display channel number/name under preview window when in menu mode. Currently, the live channel being displayed and the highlighted square in the menu have no relation to each other, so you have to pretty much guess what channel you're seeing. (This is more important with the option to go to menu mode when entering live TV set.)
• breadcrumbs on menu display so end users don't get lost in menu system eg Main Menu->Manage recordings...
• Add BACK and MAIN MENU buttons for touchscreen access.
• allow some capability to go directly to some menus via Remote control eg Watch Live TV or Guide etc..

I think this exists with jump points

• a summary of HDD free (approx hh:mm or size/GB or %free) on main menu or top of every menu.
• Sounds in the menus when you move around or select somthing. (pings and pongs)
• Adjust Volume in the menus
• Make more menu items viewable on the screen at one time instead of having to scroll up or down to see all the options.

LiveTV / View Recording

• Videotext/Teletext with analog TV-Cards
• Make OSD Scrollable, so that longer Descriptions are also visible (Maybe autoscroll or with a key)
• options to adjust video hue, contrast, color, brightness via OSD example screen from ChrisTV
• Automatically turn on CC / subtitles when LiveTV is muted, sometimes called QuickCaps apparently.
• LiveTV should also have a 'recording' priority, so you can queue shows that won't record when you are watching something else on LiveTV
• implement opengl photo transition effects as effects to be selected for channel change in LiveTV
• alarm clock feature - start playing liveTV from a given channel for a set period of time on given days of the week (i.e. weekdays, weekends)
• LiveTV multichannel preview mode - show a snapshot of each channel on a 3x3 or 4x4 matrix. Allow arrow keys and ff/rw to scroll through channels and enter to select channel
• change behavior going to livetv or attempting to change channels when all tuners are in use to provide a menu allowing the user to cancel a currently-running recording job and delete the recording.
• Provide a setting for maximum time on LiveTV or "Watch Recordings" screen with active mini preview video without any user event (i.e. no remote signal, no keypress, no channel change). When time reached, kick MythTV back out to main screen. This will prevent unnecesasry ringbuffer disk I/O after set time. A reasonable default time for this may be 6 hours.
• Automatic fine tuning, using signal strength it will scan a few kHz in each direction until it locks on the strongest signal then updates the database for that channel.
• Fine tuning with preview or while watching LiveTV, many channels are out of tune on my system and a small adjustment or two make a huge difference.
• Implement an automatic volume leveling algorithm that is common in many TVs, such as Magnavox's "Smart Sound." This attempts to eliminate drastic volume spikes that commonly occur in commercials.
• Implement a way to stream shows over the internet or other low-bandwidth connections - similar to the Slingbox. This would allow the ability to watch on a Linux laptop if you're at work. Or, even the possiblity of a truly remote mythfrontend - like one hooked up at a friend's apartment, which uses the storage and tuner of a backend elsewhere.
• Ability to take a snapshot of the current frame, maybe to press R whilst paused to take a snapshot of the current frame.
• Enable browsing channels across tuners.
• Display the recording and/or original air date in the OSD when viewing a recording.
• Make editing out of commercials easier. In addition to buttons for forward, backward, shorter jump, longer jump, etc., have a button for "this frame is part of the program" and one for "this frame is a commercial." The editor would automatically do a kind of binary search, using the key presses to decide whether to move foreward or backward, and where to place the cut points. The basic algorithm: the editor shows the first frame of the recording. If the user says it's commercial, place a start cut point and keep moving forward by the (configurable) minimum commercial break length until the user says it's not a commercial. At that point, move backward by half the minimum commercial break length. If that frame is also a commercial, move forward by a quarter of the break length; otherwise move that distance backward, and so on. When the distance to move gets to a single frame, mark the end point of the cut and move forward by the (configurable) minimum time between commercials plus the minimum commercial break length. As long as the user indicates it is a program frame, keep moving forward by the minimum break length, until a commercial frame is found, and then use a similar binary search to find the start of the commercial. Repeat util finished. Comm flagging could be used as a hint for where to start looking for the cut points.