[mythtv] Controlling an r5000hd recorder from MythTV

Michael Chmilar chmilar at acm.org
Thu Jul 14 20:14:06 EDT 2005


> Given the above and:
> 
> >I am an experienced software developer
> >
> 
> 
> Why not write real drivers?
> 

Two reasons:

1) I am _not_ an experience device driver writer. I have never
written a device driver.

2) I am lazy. To quote from the r5000hd developer (posted on
avsforum):

"No, it is not just a raw transport stream coming out, so even if you
did get Linux to somehow recognize the USB device you would still
need to make sense of the data and remux into a transport stream (the
hardest part!) and thats what the R5000-HD app handles."

So, it is not just a matter of writing a USB driver. You also have to
reverse engineer the raw data stream so it can be remuxed into a
transport stream, which, apparently, is "the hardest part".

As it is, the XP-hosted driver and app work flawlessly.

I want to have one integrated frontend for all TV sources. MythTV is
the best solution I have seen (on any platform) for that. The r5000hd
XP software requires a mouse (and occasionally a keyboard) when you
are scheduling, and a separate playback app like zoomplayer (they do
have a simple playback app, but it doesn't have many features).

Mike



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