[mythtv] Browsing across multiple tuners

Ronald Frazier ron at ronfrazier.net
Wed Jan 2 16:32:21 UTC 2008


Yes, I'm aware of Ticket #978 and the "wontfix" status. Yes I'm aware
of the "use the EPG" response...that works for me, but not for all
people. I've seen this feature requested enough, and my wife would
definitely be happier with it.

I've already coded up a patch that does the following:

- Checks the DB for a "BrowseAllTuners" parameter...if set to 0 (or if
not specified), browsing behaves exactly as it does now.
- Handles browsing: by direction, by favorites, and by direct numeric entry
- Adds the following extra infoMap attributes for the browse_info OSD:
      tuner = "Current Tuner", "Tuner 3", or empty if no tuner is
available for that channel
      notuner = "No Tuners Available", or empty if a tuner is
available for that channel

I could have combined these 2 together, but I thought some people
might only want to show the status one way or the other, or might want
to put them in 2 separate textareas that overlay each other, so
%TUNER% could be white and %NOTUNER% could be red. ***I have a
question about this below***

If you ignore the "No Tuners Available" message and try to change to
another tuner anyway, that gets handled by the existing code (the same
code that displays the dialog box if you directly enter the channel
number for an unavailable tuner).

The patch currently does NOT:
- set the "tuner" attribute for the program_info OSD. Is this necessary?
- support channel up/down across tuners (ie: when persistent browsing
is off). Is this necessary?
- have an option in the setup gui to enable this (thats not a part of
the mythtv code I've explored yet).


What other features would need to be considered for this to be
accepted as a patch? The discussion from ticket #978 is a bit
outdated, as I believe that was before LiveTV was completely
overhauled. At the moment I can't really see any other issues that
don't already exist when directly typing in the channel number for a
channel on another tuner.


***Question about the OSD***
What I wanted to do was be able to put the title in red if the program
wasn't available on a tuner. I thought I'd try to do this by
overlaying 2 textarea boxes with the title: one in white and one in
red. I then added another notunerflag attribute that was an empty
string if there was a tuner available, or a single space (so it would
appear invisible). I then added %NOTUNERFLAG|||% before each of the
%TITLE% variables, and embedded a few newline chars in the appropriate
spot to try to force one of the two outside of it's clipping rect (so
in effect, only the appropriate one would be visible). The problem is
that it left ellipses ( . . . )  in the display. Is there a way to
prevent this, or even a more elegant solution to the matter ( other
than modifying OSDTypeText to support something like a fcnfont )?

-- 
Ron


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