[mythtv] Development task list:

[Ed W]

>http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/wiki/FutureDevelopment
>
>Thoughts/comments?
>  
>

My personal "interests" are:

- in getting a high quality audio layer out through something like Jack 
so that I can futz with the sound.  I use a pretty high end audio system 
which actually does all the crossovers and correction on the PC itself.  
This stuff is not bad in Myth today, but the input audio isn't sorted 
yet (affects MythPhone in my case).  See 
http://www.duffroomcorrection.com to see what I am up to

- Remote status info on stuff like LCD panels or a palm pilot.  Ideally 
this is two way, ie the panel can show status info and also it can 
control a remote frontend.  One of the ways I can see this working is 
that the frontend "modules" all inherit from some "status" object and 
it's this status object which can be interogated.  Individual modules 
could override the status object to show more detailed info, but there 
can probably be some high level generic items like: Current Position, 
Play length (even this gets a bit strained when you are playing a MAME 
game though, etc...)

- A further enhancement on the remote stuff above would be to allow 
better control of the frontend from the panel.  Perhaps there is no need 
because the "status" object can tell the panel enough state info that it 
can then send the appropriate control codes to the frontend?  However, 
more robust is to make the active module think a little more in terms of 
input like "play playlist", "pause".  For example consider integrating 
the remote control play utility in Jinzora, ie you can knock up a play 
list on your laptop using a web browser, then hit play and the frontend 
wakes up and starts playing.

- Perhaps the MFD route already makes much of the above possible anyway 
(depending how it's globally implemented).  eg instead of the current 
Frontend/Backend split, perhaps the new paradigm is Backend / Output 
Device / Controller ?  This also makes it possible to emulate these 
highly expensive multi-room systems that you see with the hugely 
expensive Crestron control units that allow you to turn on the lights 
upstairs while closing the curtains downstairs...

- Actually a thought occurs whilst writing the above.  It may be 
possible to make the new architecture flexible enough that it can be 
easily hooked into in order to make Myth more like some "X11" system.  
So whilst I personally don't want to open and close the curtains from 
Myth, I *can* see that a really high end system might like to have the 
lights dim when the movie player comes on - could we have some events 
fire when the major status of the frontend changes perhaps?  Plugins can 
catch these status changes and fire off some external actions?

- So perhaps the whole framework becomes exactly that.  The TV player 
even becomes a kind of plugin and the framework just switches "modes" 
all the time into each module.  It can fire events when it does so and 
perhaps it also registers some input events so that MFD type remote 
control can easily affect it.  When you do a major shift like looking at 
the EPG, perhaps the EPG is written more like a seperate module and 
hence the input events all change.  (If the video is literally just 
streaming video then we can still get it while in the "EPG mode", and 
presumably also when we are in music mode, etc.  eg TV "visualisations")

- OK, totally thinking on my feet here - what if the frontend is 
decomposed a lot more into individual modules, so the current tv module 
might become some "menu modules", an "EPG module", a "listings search 
module" and a "video playback module"?  The idea would be to make it 
easy to mix and match and build a custom top level interface.  Myth as 
such would become the framework that lets screens change from one to the 
other and provide some place holders for state so that for example TV 
can continue in the background when the music plugin is fired up.

------

- "New Website" - Whilst accepting that wikis are not your thing I have 
had a lot of success recently with pmwiki for making websites.  The nice 
bit about the wiki is the seperation of content and formatting.  
Personally I keep the in text formatting to paragraphs, headings and 
lists, and so the syntax doesn't get in the way for me.  Then I can use 
the firefox online CSS editor to style up everything to look just how I 
like it.  Every page then has an edit button and you can just dip in and 
update stuff whenever you want to.  However, if you want another 
"Content Management Solution" then Drupal seems to be getting a lot of 
attention these days (I didn't like it that much myself)


Well you asked for some thoughts... Thoughts are free, just keep waiting 
for the code though...


Ed W