[mythtv] Mythtv & Lirc

Ronald Frazier ron at ronfrazier.net
Thu Jan 31 15:02:51 UTC 2008


> > Doesn't it already work that way?
> volume up/down/mute are the exception rather than the rule

Actually, now that I think of it, I wonder if they even are an
exception. It just dawned on me that those might not be for lirc at
all, but for the extra buttons on those multimedia keyboards with all
the buttons across the top. I wouldn't know, because I've never had a
keyboard with more than 104 keys :-)


> try using myth for a while with a remote and you will pretty soon find
> how difficult it is.

Actually, I use it exclusively with a remote. I have one that came
with my Hauppage PVR-350:
http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/uploads/Hardware/new_remote_medium.jpg

and I've also got it mapped to the DVR-2 setting of my TiVo remote.

I find that I manage to accomplish most of the things I need to do
without problem, but I've done a bit of tweaking to get it to that
state. For a few of the keys, I've written a perl script that monitors
lirc for certain remote event and then connects to mythfrontend via
the telnet port and issues command.

For instance...the guide button. I tried mapping it directly to bring
up the program guide but ran into a problem. I couldn't figure out a
way for it to use the LiveTV guide while watching LiveTV, but use the
regular guide when not in LiveTV. What my script does is watch for the
key, connect to the telnet port and query the current status of
mythfrontend, and then issue commands to switch myth to the
appropriate version of the Guide.

Also, my wife is in love with the TiVo, and I'm still having trouble
getting her to switch. I'm trying to make things behave as similarly
in myth as I can. Thats why I setup the TiVo remote to control myth.
I've also used my script to do a similar mapping with the TiVo button.
If you are not in the menu, it takes you to the main menu. If you are
already in the menu, it takes you to the watch recordings screen, just
like it does on the TiVo with the main menu/now playing screen.

If you are interested, I can follow up with further details and
provide a copy of the script.



> but there are a whole lot of keys which are only defined for one usage.
> for a button challenged remote, this can get quite difficult.

I certainly understand not having as many buttons as you wish, so no
argument there. However, I don't quite follow you on this statement.
You can reuse the same key in the different sections, so reusing
buttons is not a problem. And within a given section, it doesn't make
much sense to have a button do multiple things, unless you wanted to
to pop up a custom menu....which might not be a terrible idea, if you
mapped 1 button to the custom menu to get access to all of the less
often used functions.

-- 
Ron


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