[mythtv] MythArchive extension - request for discussion

[Jeremy Palenchar]

<SNIP>

> > I found the tricky parts of the whole thing are popping up an
> > appropriate-looking dialog asking the user to insert a particular
> disk (I
> > use zenity, but it doesn't look good), and getting the internal
> player to
> > play it once inserted (I couldn't find a way to do this, so I use
> mplayer).
> >  I gather you're using a soft link to a mount point for the DVD; I
> didn't
> > want to do that because I couldn't think of a way to prompt for a
> > particular disk when the recording is selected.  My script replaces a
> file
> > foo.avi with foo.avi.dvd, which includes which DVD the recording is
> on.
> > Then I just configured myth to handle .dvd files by running my little
> > script to prompt for the disk and play the file.
> 
> Would we really need to prompt for a particular disk?  Presumably the
> archive
> disk would be labelled appropriately and MythTV already indicates that
> files
> are not present on disk by dimming the recording title. (I think
> there's also
> a message indicating "file not found".)  This holds true btw for
> symlinks;
> If the archive is not mounted the recording is dimmed.  Perhaps a
> simple "Please  insert the archive containing 'Stargate SG-1 Children
> of the
> Gods' and press OK" would be sufficient?  Whereupon the DVD would be
> mounted
> and the player could continue normally.  Unmounting would have to be
> handled.
> And there's a possible conflict with the CD/DVD monitoring
> functionality.
> (Some additional discussion that touches on this is in my reply to
> Steve
> Smith's post, same topic.)
> 
> However, if we do decide to track disk labels, should that be
> implemented in
> the database?  Could get messy.  What if you had multiple archives of
> the
> same recording?
> 
> I still kind of favor the symlink approach but am willing to be
> convinced
> otherwise. :)
> 
> >

<SNIP>

The killer app for me is to use my Sony firewire DVD changer as my media
library. Having the ability to choose a show from the archive and having the
DVD changer automatically load the disk and play the show.

At some point, this is going to require a way to track which items are on
which disk.

It would be great if you could consider this use case when designing your
feature.


Much Thanks!

-Jeremy