[mythtv] FM support

[Ben Klopfenstein]

Thanks for the input. 
i think that icecast could handle this pretty will with an appropriate cgi;

icecast can tell how many listeners it has, and if it is at or above the 
number of radio tuners, it could refuse to change the channel, only listen to 
the current one. 

only the original connection IP could change the channel, but as soon as that 
user disconnects, control would be restored to the remaining listener or the 
oldest listener if there is more than one. 

this of course is not a great solution, but the only one i can think of that 
would work and would scale.

this wouldnt be totally user unfriendly because the user could be notified via 
shoutcast metadata that they now have control.

Of course, this doesnt sound like the best solution to me, but just the only 
one that would work well from within a standard shoutcast player. if there 
were more feedback to the server, it might be possible to have a "Renounce 
Control" button; but that means editing the player code and i wanted to have 
this work sort of out of the box.

Thanks,
-Ben

On Tuesday 15 August 2006 6:02 am, Fredrik Karlsson wrote:
> Hi Ben,
>
> I would also like to have a more extensive support for FM radio in
> MythTV, and streaming support would be a nice additional feature.
> However, it seems that there are a couple of problems with FM radio
> that has been adressed previously on this list.
>
> 1) If you have more than one user and only one tuner, you have a
> potential source of conflict on your hands as the users may disagree
> on which station to listen to.
>
> 2) Some use FM tuners on cards that also functions as TV capture
> cards. If you card is like that, you will have to stop MythTV from
> recording when you are using the card for FM radio.
> AND, yo9u will have to restore the card to it's proper state once that
> you have released it.
>
> Just some points of input.
>
> /Fredrik
>
> On 8/15/06, Ben Klopfenstein <benklop at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello, this would be my first mail to this list;
> > i have been thinking about how to make mythtv do more things lately, and
> > i think i came up with a solution for providing FM support in a network
> > transparent manner. i havnt looked over this list to see if there are
> > other things in the works, but the wiki didnt mention anything for .20
> > anyway.
> >
> > The idea would be to have an icecast server running on the backend,
> > available through a PHP or cgi page. this page would accept a Mhz number
> > as an argument, tune the FM tuner to the specified station, and then
> > either supplies the stream, or sends a forward to the address the icecast
> > server is streaming from.
> >
> > for example, the URL could be of the form http://backend/tune.cgi?102.7
> > this would tune the FM tuner to 102.7 FM and then either forward to
> > http://backend:7888 (the icecast server is presumably running on that
> > port) or stream the encoded audio itself. if no mhz argument is provided,
> > the scirpt does not tune, but just provides the stream, thus allowing
> > multiple frontends to listen without stepping on eachother.
> >
> > the stream could be tuned by any shoutcast capable player; mythstream for
> > now, the new mythmusic support for streams could do it too. A script that
> > runs once on the backend could autodetect channels (by stereo lock
> > perhaps?) and add them to the DB for whatever front end plugin is
> > avalable, mythstream for now, and perhaps mythmusic when it supports it.
> >
> >  this way it is as easy as selecting the station from a menu to play it.
> > shoutcast metadata could inform the listener of the MHZ of the station,
> > and if the tuner and script supports it, the callsign from stations that
> > broadcast that digitally. best of all, this is completely network
> > enabled, so it could be played on any frontend, even multiple frontends
> > at once.
> >
> > i may try to get this going, if school permits, it seems pretty
> > straightforward to me.
> >
> > any thoughts?
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