[mythtv-users] Free Internet TV?

[Nick Rout]

On Thu, 4 May 2006 20:36:50 -0600
Brian Wood wrote:

> 
> On May 4, 2006, at 4:01 PM, Ivan Kowalenko wrote:
> 
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > On May 4, 2006, at 06.23, Brian Wood wrote:
> >
> > What about Democracy? It's multiplatform, and has Linux support.
> > Surely the Linux Democracy client could be modified into a MythTV
> > plug-in. Biggest problem would be the variety of video formats used,
> > but I'm sure MPlayer would be the solution to that.
> 
> Didn't know about Democracy, interesting, thanks.

I just installed deomcracytv on windows after seeing it referred to
elsewhere. It combines an rss reader, bittorrent client and viewer all
in one gui. The videos do not have to be torrentable, the program uses
the enclosure url in the rss feed to determine the download method.

On windows it uses an embedded VLC to as the player. On linux it uses
xine-lib from what i can make out (I haven't got it going on linux  yet,
haven't tried actually).

The software is only at 0.82, and it shows. The concept is quite nice,
subscribe to rss feeds, get a thumbnail and summary of each show in the
rss feed and click once to download it, once again to play it. 

Complaints I have seen on the forums include the need to hack the python
code to change the directory for the downloads to go to, need to hack
the python code to change the ports bittorrent uses, the player
freezing, the player refusing to play after playing a few tracks (fixed
by a restart) and the quality of the feeds [1]. In other word beta
issues. The "need to hack" issues can be reduced by coding some config
file stuff into the code, ie a gui that writes to a config file. player
issues will be worked out in due course. I suspect that it will be a lot
more usable after a few more beta releases. 

However to me it is just a dumbed down point and click version of what I
do already with torrentflux, wget and an rss reader. And if I wanted
dumbed down I wouldn't be on this list would I?

NRR

[1] (in other words complaints about the quality of the videos offered
by third parties, you get the impression that there is a big element of
non geeks trying it out, they cannot spearate in their minds the quality
of what is found on the feeds from the quality of the delivery
mechanism)
-- 
Nick Rout <nick at rout.co.nz>