[mythtv-users] EFF calls for developers for MythTV ...
Doug Larrick
doug at ties.org
Tue Jul 6 07:25:10 EDT 2004
The EFF called out MythTV because (IMHO) it's already on par with or
exceeds similar commercial offerings, yet does so with a much broader
scope of hardware and capability, and is fully open source.
I believe what they're talking about re MythTV and HDTV (which is where
the problem is, after all... the video capture cards will continue to be
manufacturable, saleable, and useable after the July 2005 cutoff for
PC-based HDTV hardware due to broadcast flag rules) is stuff that would
make it difficult for your average user to set up and use MythTV-HDTV on
a regular basis.
* automatically determining what stations are available to a particular user
* automatically determining the 'freqid' field during Setup
Note that there's already code in 'dtvscan' (that ships with the pcHDTV)
to do these two tasks; just a matter of integrating into setup. Brandon
Beattie (author of the original hdtvrecorder code) may or may not be
working on this.
* not freezing or falling over when the user tunes to a nonexistant /
poor-reception station (a nice message would be a bonus). Daniel K. did
some good work in this area.
* Better channel-changing performance in Live TV. You guys with capture
cards have it good -- HDTV takes 30 seconds for the initial picture to
show up, and maybe 10-15 seconds for a channel change. I don't watch
Live TV, so have never bothered to debug this.
* not freezing or falling over in the face of massively bad reception.
We need to complete and enable the CRC checking code for video and audio
packets. The framework is in place (thanks Daniel); somebody needs to
debug and enable it.
* Smoother video playback. We've made great strides recently but still
aren't there. There's no reason this can't be close to perfect. This
is my current project (and at this rate, will remain so for the
forseeable future :-) )
* Operate without a net connection for guide data. PSIP data in the
ATSC stream itself is supposed to provide guide data; in my experience
it's incomplete, wrong, and/or short-duration, but that situation will
improve over time. Myth does nothing with this data; both Daniel K and
I have played around with this.
* Support for a CableCard tuner. Perhaps someone will produce Linux
drivers for one; if so, Myth should add support.
I'm sure there's more, but I see these as the HDTV-specific biggies.
If anyone was prompted to start following the MythTV lists because of
the EFF's call to arms, well here ya go. Get cracking!
-Doug
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