[mythtv-users] Does anyone have MythTv running on the iPad yet?

[Chase Douglas]

I'm downloading the iPhone OS 3.2 sdk right now, and I've glanced
through the API diffs. The main change in 3.2 is that there is now
programmatic control over the media player. I presume this control is
also extended into the built-in media playback UI as well. The reason
this is a big deal is that OS 3.1 only has two UIs when streaming
video. In the past, if the stream is "live" (i.e. has no end yet) you
got three buttons: play/pause, rewind 30s, ffwd to end of stream (i.e.
go to "live"). If you think about this, that basically makes a mythtv
app near useless.

However, we now have control. If the built-in UIs don't support free
seeking in a stream, we can make our own UIs because there are API
calls to programmatically do so. The remaining question is: do these
API calls work in a live stream? It's possible that we still only have
seek control in a non-live stream. I wouldn't put it past Apple to
have done this, as annoying as it would be. We'll have to wait and see
because there's no beta images to install on a real device yet
(there's only an sdk). Maybe the SDK will give us an idea as to what's
possible through the simulator, maybe not.

So where does that leave us with MythTV?

All the above assumes you stream to the iPhone using HTTP Live
Streaming. This entails segmenting the video stream into smaller files
and having an index file to keep track of them all. This can get
really annoying from an administrative standpoint unless we get the
ability to group files with their recordings in MythTV. For example,
when a recording is deleted, I want transcoded HTTP Live Streaming
files for that recording deleted as well. I know there was talk at one
point about MythTV acquiring this functionality, but I don't know what
has happened since.

So that's it from me for right now. I'm going to continue to play with
the SDK to see what's possible.

Thanks,
Chase