[mythtv-users] lightweight TV user-interface

Jason Baker baker29 at cs.purdue.edu
Wed Dec 7 15:55:35 EST 2005


Hi,

I'm not a mythTV user, but I am considering a series of hardware
upgrades that will place a reasonably fast computer next to my TV.
I'm not interested in DVR features so much as I am playing normal
"computer" content (avi movies, mp3s, mp3 and realaudio radio
webcasts, and realvideo TV webcasts).  I currently use a powerbook for
this kind of thing, but plugging it into the TV is a pain in the ass,
and doom 3 is extremely painful on a G4 mac.

MythTV looks like a very slick system (the program guide and MythVideo
library look especially appealing), but it also looks very hard to
customize.  As far as I can tell, if I want to change the menu layout,
I need to define a new theme using some weird xml-based format.  And,
if I want to tweak the interface to the music and movie libraries, I
need to do it in C++.

It seems to me that a user-interface based on php and javascript might
be a lot easier to hack, and could work at least as well as MythTV.
Such a system could even launch MythTV to access DVR functionality.

My question for the list is two-fold.  First, is my impression of
MythTV wrong?  And second, what other programs are out there that work
well with TVs and remote controls?

Jason


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