[mythtv] Thanks, Bugs, and Features

[Michael J. Pedersen]

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First off, let me say thank you for this. I've been using it less than 4 days, and asbolutely love the way it just plain WORKS.

Of course, I have noticed a few things which (I think) need fixing, and I intend to hop in and fix them as quickly as I can learn my way through the code to do so. However, if somebody else were to do so, I wouldn't mind too very much :)

First, information: I'm running Debian, trying to stick with testing, though moving into unstable more and more lately. Athlon 1.3GHz, 1G RAM. MythTV 0.7 (though I'm going to upgrade to 0.8 later this week), installed from Debian packages.

Bugs I've found so far (and none of them major) all relate to running as a different user than the Debian packages create/recommend. I log in as my normal user (marvin instead of mythtv), and got some abnormal behavior, including an inability to connect to the database. I was able to fix most of it by simply adding marvin to the mythtv group, but still had to deal with some file permissions (since I started by using mythtv user, I had several files which I couldn't write, including ringbuf.nuv).

Anyway, a recommended solution to these issues is (as part of the installation script) ask for a list of users which should be added to the mythtv group. Also, when running, make sure to set all files read/write for the mythtv group as they are being created. I do realize that these suggestions might not be well received (indeed, they may not be perceived as bugs), but thought I should mention them, since I thought of them.

One other bug I've found is still related to running as a different user than was started. The capture directory was made group readable, but not group writeable (that, however, is my fault). As a result of this, when I logged in as marvin and tried to record, I got a segmentation fault. I've always believed that a user crashing a program should be impossible, so my suggestion is to print a message on screen somewhere (and not in the terminal window!) saying that recording isn't possible due to a system error (more information is always better), and return to normal after that. It would, at least, be more graceful than a straight crash.

And now, some interface enhancements which I can devise for the whole system, and would love to see.

First MythTV itself:
On each of the non-playback related screens in mythtv (ie: episode guide, main page, etc), have the time and current action displayed somewhere (ie: "08:00 AM, Recording" or "09:15 AM, Idle"). Time is just because it'd be kind of nice, but status would be very useful to have.

Consistency is another big issue. My remote (yes, I've actually set up a remote for this) feels weird when using it, because I have to use separate keys to accomplish similar things. For instance, I'm using a DVD remote, with a select button. That is mapped to the enter key. However, in some screens, enter doesn't work, and I must use the space key. I've also got a desire to map the end/home keys for the episode guide, and am working out how to do that.

Finally, some easier setting of recording quality would be nice. To be more specific, allowing people to choose from something like vcd, svcd, and vcd on dvd (different audio bitrate) would be very nice indeed.

Next, MythMusic:
This one winds up being more of a suggestion for mythfrontend, I think, but I'll suggest it anyway as part of mythmusic, since this is where I noticed it. When I ran mythmusic, it started cataloging my mp3 collection, which is several thousand files over an nfs mounted drive. After about 5 minutes, I finally killed mythmusic, and figured that (for now) zinf would do just as well as anything else. My suggestion is an extra bit of setup for the plugin modules, which would allow them to spawn separate processes at the start of mythfrontend, thereby letting mythmusic do its cataloging all the time (since it's been running for a few days non-stop, it would definitely have finished by now). Also, a different (and more difficult design) for mythmusic which would allow a scanning process to run in the background, and add files to the available list as it found them, would be a very nice addition.

Oh, and one more thing while I'm asking: Is anybody working on MythDVD, to play DVDs under this environment? And how about the commercial editor? Is it ready to chop out commercials yet, and do that to the encoded file?

Sorry for how long this is, this is just me trying to collect all my thoughts all at once.

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