[mythtv-users] MythTV vs XBMC

Sam Jacobs samlists at ijacobs.co.uk
Wed May 7 23:16:45 UTC 2014



On 7 May 2014 at 23:18:28, Richard Morton (richard.e.morton at gmail.com) wrote:
> In my view the concept us a complex user interface on the tv is going to go
> away. I've spoken about this on a few occasions previously but there is now
> evidence that this is happening...
>  
> If myth back end was the store of the media and the smart phone/tablet
> application was the use interface and controller then the TV just needs to
> be renderer of the video or audio... A.k.a. a chromecast…

There is a broad spectrum of opinion on this subject, but for me personally, there is nothing I find more frustrating than most of this “second screen” stuff. It’s exciting, too, because clearly there are *a lot* of people who find that sort of experience really engaging, but primary interaction, for me, *needs* to happen on the primary screen. I really DO NOT WANT to be groping around on my iPhone to choose what I want to watch. I’m not even 100% fond of having to look at the screen on my Harmony Touch, but it’s a compromise I accept because there’s no remote without a touchscreen that is as capable as the Touch.

That’s not to say that secondary engagement can’t happen on a second screen, but it *does* need to be simple. The BBC’s Antiques Roadshow game is a good example of this, where the primary engagement is the programme itself, then at certain points the viewer can guess what the item is worth using their device. This approach, v.s. traditional red button on screen interactivity, also enables a group of people to engage individually. It would be even better if the devices were able to communicate with an app running on the STB, but that would probably be very difficult to implement reliably. Not impossible, of course, even if the devices can’t connect directly to the app. But that’s way off topic…


> Myth be is already a great server. Chromecast or Amazon fire TV or apple
> can do the rendering (and worry about interfacing to all those other pesky
> services like YouTube Netflix etc... we just need a great app? To stitch
> the backend to the renderer via a great user interface on a tablet. No?

In addition to what I wrote above, there are a lot of features that MythFrontend exposes that would need to be implemented for anything else to be a viable frontend for many users. Commflagging, skiplists, bookmarks, playlists, recgroups, recgroup passwords, playback groups, programme status, deleting programmes and on and on—and that’s just playing back recordings, never mind scheduling them!

However, that doesn’t by any means make this a pointless discussion. On the contrary, it’s very important and I expect that great strides will be made, and indeed have already been made, in the area of alternative frontends. But at the end of the day they are now and probably always will be *alternative* frontends. The backend *needs* at least one frontend that supports *all* of its advanced features, and I really don’t see the devs deciding to put the fate of the primary frontend—and by extension the fate of MythTV itself—into the hands of another project, which is what some have been suggesting.

Sam


--  
Sam Jacobs on MythTV 0.27, UK Freeview SD & Freesat HD, EIT-only EPG
Mac mini, MBE+FE: OS X Mavericks, bundled FE, macports BE
Acer Aspire L310, SBE: Debian testing, Elgato EyeTV for DTT Stick (Hauppauge Nova-T USB Stick in disguise!) & DVBSky S960 DVB-S2 USB

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