[mythtv-users] How to play music/videos (mythvideo/mythmusic) on remote mythfrontend

[Bill Williamson]

On 11/12/07, Tom Dexter <digitalaudiorock at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 11, 2007 12:17 PM, Ma Begaj <derliebegott at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Videos and music are at first sight frontend based, because they can
> > only be managed through frontend plugins. But, they are actually not
> > frontend/host based, because every frontend can  see/delete videos
> > from the other frontend. It is somehow not consistent, but the reason
> > is probably laying in "very early days of Myth development".
> >
> > M.
> >
>
> If mythvideo accessed video content via the backend, in my opinion, that would
> create an even bigger inconsitency, since mythtv allows you to use
> external players
> rather than the internal player...players that need to see the video as a local
> path anyway.  I still prefer to use xine and mplayer for most video.  I use xine
> with the tvtime post processing for DVDs.  Speaking of DVDs...I hate to think
> what would be involved in playing DVDs via the backend.
>
> Personally, I'll take it just the way it is any day...let plain old
> network shares
> take care of it.


I disagree 100%.  This is one area where windows media center has the
edge, in that remote systems really are remote systems.

I know about the history of how myth was designed, then split to
front/back ends (and am NOT complaining), but a "proper" home AV
server:

-Would have a detailed, documented remote API over technology of
choice (soap/socket/xmlrpc/who cares)
-Would only require a single port to be opened between the client and server
--would NOT require (nor allow if properly firewalled) the client to
talk to mysql/file shares/etc
-Would accept a capabilities string from the client and either
(minimum) hide/mark incompatible files (flacs for non-flac clients) or
(ideal) transcode
-Would NOT depend on matched client/server versions (the main reason
this is the case currently is that the client has to talk to mysql
directly.... a full client-server change would negate this issue)

Again, Myth evolved from a Tivo replcaement to a full
multiple-client-server system, so I understand why this isn't the case
(and again am not complaining).


The "external player" dilemma isn't really a dilemma becuase most/all
external players allow you to pipe content to them via stdin.