[mythtv] Musings On Standard File Formats

Jay R. Ashworth jra at baylink.com
Sat Apr 19 12:34:06 EDT 2003


On Fri, Apr 18, 2003 at 08:10:18PM -0400, Michael J. Pedersen wrote:
> Now, I freely admit, there may be technical considerations of which I'm
> not aware. That doesn't mean it should be an ignored question. However,
> if there are such reasons, maybe they should be posted in a FAQ, so as
> to shut people like me up?

It's a cost benefit analysis thing, as always.

My *personal* opinion (which, as someone who isn't contributing
patches, is probably not worth as much ;-) is that the benefit side of
the ledger in this particular situation must *strongly* outweigh the
cost side to make it A Good Idea to go one's own way: Getting The Glue
Right is almost *the* most important thing for making an object or
system productive and long-lived.

It's a corollary to Metcalfe's law ("the value of a network rises as the
square of it's node count"): the usefulness of your widget increases
*markedly* if it can be easily patched into the fabric of other widgets
out there.  HTML, Telnet, and SMTP management of non-computer devices
with ethernet ports is an excellent example.

This is too.

But the First Law of Open Source is "Scratch your own itch"...

In any event, Real Cool Hack, Isaac; I haven't seen a project community
with as much energy in quite some time.  As soon as I can afford some
components, i'll be climbing on.


Did anyone ever say how many cards you could run in uncompretssed-
encode-it-later mode without running out of bus (and drive) bandwidth?


Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

   "If you don't have a dream; how're you gonna have a dream come true?"
     -- Captain Sensible, The Damned (from South Pacific's "Happy Talk")


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