[mythtv-users] Ideas for new MythTV Features

Randy Winchester randy at MIT.EDU
Thu Dec 2 15:05:37 UTC 2004


I've been using MythTV for about five months now and I'm totally 
impressed (even though a recent Synaptic upgrade broke live tv viewing, 
but I'll get around to taking care of it).  I'm not only impressed with 
the thoroughness of the software, but also the commitment of the Myth 
community.  I plan to be using Myth for a long time.

I have some ideas for a couple of new Myth features / enhancements.  I'd 
love to begin implementing them, but my last programming experiences 
were with 6502 assembly back in the late 1980s!  Maybe some will 
consider these ideas outrageous or too difficult to implement, but as 
far as I can tell most of this functionality already exists in Myth.  
Somebody smack me if I seem out of line.

The first idea is about making MythNews more useful.  MythNews is a 
great idea, but a lot of the content doesn't look that great rendered in 
fonts too small to see on a television.  MythNews already grabs the 
headlines for each of the items and displays them nicely.  Why not have 
MythNews grab the rest of the article text as well?   The display could 
use OSD routines to make it possible to read news and watch tv / 
recordings at the same time, sort of like the news ticker on CNN 
(although it might be preferable to scroll through a line or two at a 
time, like CC).  If this is doable, then a next step might be to better 
integrate MythWeb, similar to the WebTV "enhanced television" browser 
that can extract URLs imbedded in the VBI.

Another idea is for a playback scheduling module.  This is sort of the 
reverse of a recording schedule.  It would set up a playlist that could 
begin at a specified time and switch various MythTV functions as 
requested, such as a sequence of recordings, videos, pictures and music 
that would then play back unattended.

One more idea . . . the OSD and menu text is nice, so why not make it 
available as a character generator / titler while editing recordings?  
That would be very cool!  And if that can be done, the routines could be 
reused in the playback scheduler as well.

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Randy Winchester, Video Fanboy. <randy at mit.edu>
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