[mythtv-users] Frontend as cable settop box--using Live-TV

lists.md301 lists.md301 at gmail.com
Thu Aug 8 17:31:20 UTC 2013


On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Gary Buhrmaster
<gary.buhrmaster at gmail.com>wrote:

> > So please, don't abandon LiveTV--the changes our content providing
> overlords
> > are making it a more, not less, desirable feature.
>
> I have never heard anyone say "Abandon LiveTV" (although from time
> to time I have heard comments about it being a twisty maze of
> passages, all different, and C-4 might be an answer).
>
> Personally, if I cared about LiveTV, and it was not working, and I was
> unable to perform the necessary debugging(*), I would consider
> offering(**) the availability of a remote dedicated/isolated/performant
> development system that exhibits the failure with a long term
> availability commitment (like a few years). With 100% remote
> access (kvm with remote ISO support, root access, remote power
> cycle, etc.  Perhaps a spiderduo as the kvm).  Such remote
> development systems, if they were available in differing geographic
> regions, would actually be helpful for many cases where the current
> development process is iterative.  If MythTV were a project run by
> a corporation, such remote systems would be an expected cost of
> doing business.  Providing that type of system is probably a high
> barrier for most users, but that is the only way some of these
> (edge case) bugs are likely to be able to get resolved, should the
> devs find some more of that (ever more elusive) free time, and
> would, it seems to me, something that people with a different
> skill sets might be able to contribute to the community (not
> everyone can code C++, and not everyone can do good documentation,
> and not everyone could contribute a remote access system, but all
> those things can make the project better).
>

Your description about the quality of the LiveTV code (as it has evolved,
not blaming anyone for that) is why I framed my question the way I did.
I've gotten this impression after reading the mailing list for years:
There may still be issues there, for some people, that require a particular
sequence of events only on certain configurations to trigger, but even
after finding identifying them and opening a ticket, the only way to really
fix things is, as you say, with C-4 and start from the ground up.  I know
the developers know this.  I also realize that starting from the ground up
is alot of work and why it hasn't and may never happen.  Fine by me.

If I do start using LiveTV after updating to the pending 0.27, and its
functionality were important to me, I'd certainly step up and help the
developers however I could.  Starting with figuring out how to get a
backtrace capable version running on my Gentoo system (either my production
setup or a debug chroot).  Or even, as you suggest, remote access if that
were helpful.

Another interesting (to me) quirk with past history of using LiveTV (under
0.23 and 0.24 both I think), back when my primary/only digital tuner was my
Motorola DCT-6200 over firewire.  I had to be careful, as watching LiveTV
on my backend/frontend machine for more than a minute or so would cause it
to spontaneously/randomly power down.  I mean, what the heck?!  Never
happened watching recordings in progress from the STB.  It was too scary
(for the health of my setup) for me to attempt to seriously debug, but it
left no obvious log info or core dump to figure out what was happening.
Probably some weird kernel driver interaction, but I never tested it
further to know whether, perhaps, it could also happen watching LiveTV on a
remote frontend too.  At any rate, not something to open a ticket about,
not without some serious triage to rule out a hardware issue on my end.
(And no, I have not noticed any other power supply issue with that machine
before or since, but it does make one wonder.)

Before I had my HDHR Prime, I did try looking at the firewire tuner channel
change code (yes, I realize firewire STB support will likely atrophy going
forward, now that CableCard devices have made our life much easier and the
FCC mandated FW support fades), as Comcast in my area moved to 4-digit
channel numbers, but the built-in code only supports 3 digit tuning.  Yes,
I know there are external channel changing script hooks.  If my Prime had
not come along when it did at about the same time, I would have figured out
how to fix that and offered a patch.  I still might be interested,
eventually, as I might want to make the STB the first priority tuner for
LiveTV, and have access to all my channels.
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