[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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