[mythtv] Generic interface for getting video in to mythbackend

[Jay Sprenkle]

On 5/2/05, Isaac Force <gorgonous at web-ster.com> wrote:
> I originally sent a message to the mythtv-users list asking if any sort
> of generic interface for getting video data in to mythbackend existed
> and didn't receive a response, so I believe that posting here would be
> the next logical step.
> 
> I have a Perl script that I wrote to 'tune' IPTV video streams and do
> something with the data that I would like to have interface with Myth.
> Simplistically, in IPTV land a TV channel = a multicast group, and to
> watch the channel all it involves is joining that group and listening to
> the data. However, my abilities with C++ don't go much farther beyond
> Hello World, so I don't believe I'd be able to tackle adding multicast
> as a tuner option in Myth.
> 
> In my mind the ideal option would be a custom/dummy tuner in Myth that
> would execute a command and listen to its STDOUT for the video data. The
> script could listen on STDIN for simple commands from Myth such as
> channel change, clean up and exit, etc. This would not only be
> advantageous for me, but for anybody else whose skills in C++ are
> lacking, or even somebody who wants to rapidly prototype a new type of
> tuner that they would eventually like to roll in to Myth.
> 
> Does anything remotely similar to this exist today and I've just missed
> it? Or can anybody think of a way this could be added with my mere
> mortal skills? ;-) (Or better yet, anybody feel like this would be a
> good enough of an idea to possibly tackle it?)

That sounds like a cool idea. This is similar to winamp's shoutcast
but for video?  http://shoutcast.servers.serverroom.us/

I haven't dug through the mythtv internals yet, so this might not
be the best way to go about it. I know the tuners appear as
raw devices in the /dev/ directory. One method would be
to create a device driver that emulates a video device using the data
from the network stream. Do you have a link to more information about
the IPTV protocol?

The big questions for me are:
"Is there anything worth watching on that channel?"
Is the protocol free of commercial entanglements? Can anyone feed video
or would I be just working to put money in someone else's pockets?