User:Mattwire

About Me

I currently work as a Broadcast Systems Engineer for the BBC in Television Centre, London. In my spare time I throw myself down hills on a mountain bike, down caves on a rope and other silly pursuits...

Involved with various IPTV projects and DVB multiplexing for the UK as well as European satellite operations.

MythTV Boxes

Combined Front/Backend - Galahad

• MSI K8NGM2-FID
• Athlon64 3200+
• 512MB DDR RAM
• 320Gb Seagate Barracude SATA HDD (/ - ext3; /store - xfs)
• nVidia 6150 on-board (Component, DVI, Composite Out)
• 1x KWorld DVB-220RF Hybrid PCI (DVB-T/Analog/FM - Saa7134 chipset)
• 1x Kworld DVBS-100 PCI (DVB-S - CX88 chipset, currently unused since no access to satellite feed)
• Ubuntu Feisty with customised MythTV packages built from SVN head
• IRMan serial infra-red receiver (to be replaced with a UIRT2 when I build one)

Other systems on my network run a frontend which connects to Galahad as and when required.

Patches/Modifications

Stuff in bold needs looking at

Patches I'm Using

• #3405 Alsa input for analog capture

Applies, not tested to see if it actually works.

• #3189 Mythfrontend rescales themes every startup

This works really well, the prescaling dialog barely appears now.

• #3501 osd channel icon not rescaled on osd theme change

Applies, need to test switching osd but I certainly see all my icons.

• #3293 Autodiscovery Patch for MythFrontend

Works very well, as the ticket says the GUI could do with a little love.

• #3334 Allow mythtv-setup to use the downloadable icons from the new online database

Applies, I cannot get this to actually do anything at the moment though - need to investigate further.

Patches I want to test/apply/look at

• #3505 Avoid OSD resize from 4:3 when viewing 16:9 TV

Need to apply this

• #3432 Restarting backend while mythtranscode is running violates job queue rules

Looks like an easy patch for this could be written

• #3500 Add more values from lm_sensors to mythbackend http status page
• #3502 Adds CPU, motherboard temperature and CPU fan speed to mythfrontend's status page

These two patches duplicate code. Code for retrieving data should be abstracted into libmythtv somewhere.

• #3446 Enhancement: Configurable exit menu

I've got a similar patch in my tree, need to compare the two

Mythshutdown stuff

• #2896 mythwelcome, mythshutdown and mtd

No way of detecting what mtd is doing at the moment.

• #3463 mythshutdown does not check for live tv recording

It's not supposed to... But might be worth adding an option

• #3420 Suggested Enhancement: allow nested "mythshutdown --lock" calls
• #3403 Stop automatic shutdown from occurring whilst jobs are still pending

Patches submitted by me

• #3077 Default CD Device selection

Some work in SVN. Lot's of work done by Nigel here. Need to review current status and work out where work should be done.

• #3280 Add IsMasterBackend and BackendIsRunning functions to mythcontext

Needs reviewing by a dev. Provides useful functions for mythtv

• #3279 Improve server reconnect/wakeup method

This patch improves the server reconnect method used in mythcontext. Needs reviewing by a dev

• #2840 Add option to autostart MTD

Not accepted. Applied to my build. I think this makes myth and mtd easier to use.

• #1892 DVD Detection Problem

Not accepted. This concerns the detection of DVD's based on video_ts directory. Should be uppercase if mounted as udf, but doesn't

• #3078 Consistent behaviour of SELECT action across widgets

In SVN 13123

• #2839 Enable virtual keyboard for ComboBox

In SVN 12347

• #2838 Allow use of Arbitrary commands for mythwelcome setwakeuptime

In SVN 12374

• #2238 Mute logic fails on cards using v4l1-compat

In SVN 11376 (modified version)

• #2214 vbi device detection

In SVN 10886 really make any difference if mounted as iso9660 except it's lowercase. This fixes detection for this scenario.

Thoughts/Ideas

• Write a service menu app for mythtv that provides the following options:

* Run Mythtv-setup (this will stop the backend while mythtv-setup is running)
* Start/Stop Mythfrontend
* Start/Stop Mythbackend
* Restart computer
* Start/Stop mysqld
* Run a terminal
Needs to integrate with LIRC so it can be controlled by remote but should be separate
program from other mythtv programs so it can run when there are problems etc.
See also: #3377 Add "Run Setup" button to mythwelcome popup menu to start mythtv-setup.

• Mythshutdown -x should offer an osd message if it cannot shutdown.