[mythtv-users] android playback without HLS?

[Eric Sharkey]

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Brian J. Murrell <brian at interlinx.bc.ca> wrote:
> On 13-01-07 09:14 AM, Daniel Frey wrote:
>> The app isn't meant to be a replacement for your normal DVR watching
>> habits, just a complement to it (i.e. you are sitting in the airport, on a
>> train, or taking the kids on a long car ride, etc.).
>
> But a more and more frequent complement is that everyone has a tablet
> and/or phone anymore and will be sitting around the house with it and
> just decide to watch something on it instead of heading down the livingroom.
>
> Or maybe they just want portability with their watching, or they are
> working out in their home gym where there is no Myth FE, etc.

I blame Google and/or Stephen Elop somewhat equally for this mess.
Nokia had a Linux based phone/tablet OS called Maemo which took the
approach that the phone/tablet was really a portable computer.  It had
a full Linux environment on it and ran X11 for graphics.  Linux
software ported to Maemo easily, and the regular linux MythTV frontend
was ported to it (google MaemoMyth).  The tablets of the day weren't
really powerful enough to pull this off very well, but this approach
is really what you want here.  The full mythtv frontend just like it
would be on a laptop/PC, but on a tablet.

Today, we have the hardware, but the new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has
killed off all support for Maemo, having drunk the Microsoft Kool-Aid
big time.

Google took a different approach with Android.  It's got a Linux
kernel, but isn't "Linux" (GNU/Linux) in any other real way.  Android
apps are all specially written for Android, rather than being just
ordinary Linux program.  People writing Android Apps typically
approach it thinking of writing an "app" rather than writing fully
fledged general purpose software.

I don't see this changing much until Ubuntu Phone really takes off, if it can.

Eric