[mythtv-users] Mooting architecture for a DataDirect replacement

Jay R. Ashworth jra at baylink.com
Fri Jun 22 19:24:03 UTC 2007


On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 02:30:34PM -0400, Rod Smith wrote:
> For the application under discussion, out-of-order postings don't matter; 
> whether you get the update for HBO or Discovery Channel first won't matter to 
> any even quarter-competently designed software on the MythTV box, and the 
> MythTV developers are *MUCH* more than 1/4 competent! ;-)

Correct, on all points.

> > I would expect usability would be the main hinderance with NNTP.
> 
> Why? The idea is not (I presume) to force people to use news readers like 
> Leafnode, Knews, or Pan to download listings. The idea (as I understand it) 
> is to incorporate a specialized NNTP client into MythTV, or to be called by 
> MythTV. This client would access the newsgroup(s) that carry the data for an 
> individual's system, download the headers, figure out which ones carry useful 
> data (the subject lines would have to carry highly structured summary data), 
> download the bodies of those messages, and then process those bodies much as 
> MythTV already processes files from other sources.

Correct; that's precisely what I had in mind.

>                                                   From a user's point of 
> view, all that would be required would be pointing MythTV at an appropriate 
> NNTP server and selecting or creating a lineup in some way. There might also 
> be a possibility to tweak things -- say, by telling the system how often to 
> check for updates. Overall, this wouldn't be much, if any, more complex than 
> what we've got now, from a user's point of view. In fact, in some ways it 
> would be simpler, since you wouldn't have to log onto zap2it to manage your 
> lineups -- you'd do that from your Myth box!

I have always thought that the *real* reason that Z2L did the lineup
aggregation was not convenience (though knowing the lineups of the
cable and satellite providers is useful), but rather control -- if the
data is prepackaged per user, it's much less useful to steal.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com                     '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274


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