Hi-<br>
<br>
I'm wondering if anybody is using this service? is it
legal? Have you been able to incorporate into mythtv?
Unfortunately most of the help/forums is in German, and my command of
the language isn't so good.<br>
<br>
For those not familiar, (my limited understanding) is that this site
lets one set up an account and then "record" free OTA programming,
commercials included, from several German TV stations. Once the
recording is complete, a user downloads the show, in an encyrpted
format. In order to "decode", you must be online and the account
info is confirmed by the website. An individual account is only
allowed to "decode" a show one time and the resulting file is a mid
resolution .wmv file- In addition, you can only decode shows that you
explicitly designated to record. I'm guessing that these one
decode rules gets them around some personal use vs redistribution
laws. File download can be via their own dedicated but
overwhelmed server or torrent, but again, while you may be able to
download every show broadcast, you can only decode those which you've
specifically recorded. <br>
<br>
My wife is German and there are few options here in the USA to obtain
programming from Germany. I've contemplated building a cheap
backend box and installing at my in-law's house (who live outside of
Hamburg) and configuring some sort of database synchronization over the
internet to my system here, but there are many challenges.
There's nobody really computer savvy in the village and I only visit
1-2 times/year. In addition, I'd need to pay for a 2nd sattelite
account and internet access at their house so it becomes cost
prohibitive for the amount of german tv programming we'd actually watch.<br>
<br>
I've been recording things using <a href="http://onlinetvrecorder.com">onlinetvrecorder.com</a> for a few
days. The on-line EPG isn't as good as mythweb, but
passable. Because the system lets one record multiple streams at
once, there are no tuner priority issues. On the down side- no
option for "live tv" viewing. However, with time differences, in
the USA we'd rarely think about live tv, and with mythtv, don't watch
live tv anyways. I can manually download and decode and put files
into my mythvideos directory
and view the files, but would at least like to automate the
process. For our purposes, scheduling downloads/decoding once a
day during low traffic periods is more than adequate. After that I'd
like to be able to add autoexpire options to mythvideo. And the
icing on the cake would be to allow scheduling through epg data within
mythtv, and importing the programs into the recordings database-
complete with commercial flagging capacity. There's a linux
version of the decoder available.<br>
<br>
As mentioned, I'd just like to automate the process of getting the
programs into mythtv- and the tools may already be out there, but I'm
not finding them with my limited knowledge of the german
language. I've got both a windows server as well as my mythtv
backend running 24/7 so options in either platform are welcome- but
obviously linux would be my 1st choice. If I spark some
ideas for simple plugin or mythtv features for the future that's good
too. Unfortunately, I'm a biologist not a programmer and I think
incorporation into mythtv will be best left to someone who knows what
they're doing. Thanks, for any help that anyone can give.<br>
<br>
Mike<br>