[mythtv] Proposed Change to MythMusic

[Joseph Caputo]

On 7/9/07, Jochen Kühner Privat <jochen.kuehner at gmx.de> wrote:
>
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: mythtv-dev-bounces at mythtv.org [mailto:mythtv-dev-bounces at mythtv.org] Im
> Auftrag von Stuart Morgan
> Gesendet: Montag, 9. Juli 2007 11:32
> An: Development of mythtv
> Betreff: Re: [mythtv] Proposed Change to MythMusic
>
> On Monday 09 July 2007 10:08:11 Gaeremynck, Matthieu wrote:
> > Maybe something to keep in mind for future mythtv versions. Currently if
> > you play music the music stops as soon as you go back to the main view.
> > I think there should be a "function" to keep the music playing. Example;
> > I have people coming to watch my pictures. So I would put some music on,
> > start watching the pictures. Now you have to watch your pictures in
> > silence ;)
>
> This 'feature' is suggested by users regularly. Which is just one reason why
>
> we ask users to post wishlist features to the wiki and not to the mailing
> list or trac.
>
> If I ever get the time then I might implement this but it's a little more
> complicated than it sounds. Mostly because few people can really say have
> they imagine it working - how is music controlled once you leave mythmusic?
> Should music stop playing when you watch tv or a recording? More importantly
>
> should the music resume playing when you leave a recording? Think carefully
> about that last one because people's first answer is usually yes until they
> consider the possibility of loud rock/metal suddenly blasting out without
> warning.
>
> Assuming that everyone wants music/volume to be controllable even when not
> in
> mythmusic and for music to stop when audio is required for other things e.g.
>
> TV, recordings, video, DVDs, phone that means changes to several areas of
> mythtv.
> --
> Stuart Morgan
>
>
>
> I think the first discussion is, how we implement this??? Should we use mfd
> (myth frontend deamon) or should be implement this in the current plugin? Is
> it planed to use mfd?

I kind of like mpd (http://www.musicpd.org); using MythMusic as a
frontend to a backend daemon.  I would use mpd only for the actual
audio output & control, not to maintain the actual music database.
For that, I'd use something like Firefly (formerly mt-daapd), and for
frontend collection browsing, we'd need to write a DAAP client (might
be able to utilize some of the mfd work here).  A setup like this
would allow a MythMusic frontend to control either its own local
mfd/audio output, or remotely control an mfd/audio output on another
machine.  I would not even bother with audio ripping or library
management, as I'd much rather perform this task on a real PC desktop
using other tools -- amarok, iTunes, etc.

The main problem I see with this approach (apart from someone have the
time to implement it) is license compatibility... libmpdclient has a
BSD license.  There are ways around that, such as writing a small
wrapper application to distribute separately, or maintaining our own
mpd client library that is protocol-compatible with the mpd server,
but obviously using the libmpdclient API directly is cleaner, easier
and safer.  Personally, if I were going to do this, I'd just develop a
plugin directly agains libmpdclient and maintain it outside of the
main Myth source tree.  Of course that risks having it break when
there are major updates to Myth...

Ah, well.  I don't have time to write this, anyway.  I'm just floating
some ideas I had in case someone feels like running with it.

-JAC