[mythtv] Hauppauge MediaMVP as Myth Frontend

[James L. Reese]

I've seen some discussion about using a Hauppauge MediaMVP as a myth frontend.  I picked one up last week and have done some hacking on it.

Several folks over at the shspvr forum have done some of the preliminary work necessary to accomplish this.  Check out: http://www.shspvr.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=38

The "Hacking the MediaMVP" thread describes how to set up the box to netboot to an NFS root so you can play with the software more easily.

The "native media player" thread describes development of a native media player app that runs in the mediaMVP box.

Basically the box uses a modified VNC protocol for the setup, IR remote and the user interface menu system.  Once the user selects an item for viewing, the MPEG data is sent over a seperate TCP channel to the hardware MPEG decoder inside the box.

I've loaded all the test software developed by the guys on shspvr (thanks for your work!) and played with it.  I've got my mediaMVP booting from one of my linux boxes with NFS root and have all the PPC cross compiler tools loaded.  I've built a kernel and apps that run on the MVP and I've built d0m's linux based backend server for the MVP.  All this works fine and I'm convinced it will be possible to do a myth frontend pretty easily using one of these boxes.

I would very much like to continue with this but my coding skills are moderate at best.  I'm not a pro developer by any stretch.  I'm adequate at C, but C++ still makes my hair catch fire.  I've looked at the mythfrontend code a little bit but don't Grok its fullness.  I am beginning to understand how d0m's mediamvp code works, however.

My approach is to use the "stock" code in the media MVP then write an interface between mythfrontend and the Hauppauge code.  I'll use the modified VNC to display the myth menus and the TCP streaming for the MPEG data.  The user would see the normal X display with the myth menu over the VNC channel, then after selecting something from the myth menu, open the TCP channel and stream the MPEG data to the MediaMVP's hardware instead of the XV method used in myth.

I think if we take the code d0m already developed and modify it so the VNC server sends the standard X display instead of building the user interface in the VNC framebuffer directly as d0m has done the myth menu part will just work.  d0m's code already handles the IR remote and provides a function that returns the key pressed.  This should interface to myth like lirc does.

The part I can't wrap my mind around because I don't understand the code is how to modify myth so it can send the MPEG data over the TCP channel.

I think someone more familiar with the myth code could do this pretty quickly.

Anyone interested in helping tackle this project?

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Jim Reese, WD5IYT   jim at hosemore.net