[mythtv-users] New LCD Server Q's

[Paul]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg Grotsky" <spikeygg at gmail.com>
To: "MythTV Users" <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 6:07 AM
Subject: [mythtv-users] New LCD Server Q's


>I really like the new LCD code as it is much more robust, but I've found
>some issues with it.

>1. The code runs as a seperate process so if you kill the frontend it spits
>out a warning every 10 seconds or so. Is there a way to make it a child of
>the mythfrontend process, so that if you kill the frontend it kills the
>LCDserver?

One of the design goals of the mythlcdserver is that it can run independently of
the frontend and can accept connections from any client not only the frontend.
As long as you shutdown the frontend cleanly the lcdserver will detect that and
switch to the time display. If you kill the frontend rather than shut it down cleanly
using the menus the lcdserver won't know the connection has been closed and
will continue to show what was on the display at that time. Simply restarting the
frontend will fix things ( or any client that connects to the mythlcdserver). Why are 
you killing the frontend in the first place?

Are you sure the warning you see is not because the mythbackend has gone away?
The mythlcdserver periodically checks its connections to mythbackend/lcdproc and shows 
a warning if they have gone away. You can prevent the lcdserver from showing the 
warnings by manually starting it with 'mythlcdserver --verbose none'. I made sure 
when writing the lcdserver that when using the default verbose level the only output 
you should see is when something is wrong - lost connections etc. 

>2. In mythmusic the display is much slower than it used to be. I used to
>roll through the songs and it would spit out the currently selected song on
>my VFD but now there is serious lag. It takes a few seconds to update the
>display with the currently selected song. Is there any way to speed this up?

I've seen something similar myself. It gets worse the more tracks are in the playlist.
It looks like a problem with the way the UIManagedTreeListType handles the lcd
rather than a problem with the lcdserver. I'll take a look at fixing it when I have some
time.

The LCD display on the playlist screen has been broken for a long time - at least for
me it has - it seem to have a fixation with 'Danger Will Robinson' :-)


>3. My VFD module is pretty crappy 16x2, so I can't see very much at any
>given time. However, in the old code when in LiveTV or watching a recording
>it would display the StationID on the top line while displaying the current
>program's title and subtitle on the bottom line. Is there an "easy" way to
>fix this? :)

Agreed, there are a lot of areas where myth could make better use of the LCD not
only with 2 line displays but also making better use of the extra lines on 4 line displays.


>Thanks,
>-Greg

Paul