[mythtv] FM support

[Ben Klopfenstein]

Hello, this would be my first mail to this list; 
i have been thinking about how to make mythtv do more things lately, and i 
think i came up with a solution for providing FM support in a network 
transparent manner. i havnt looked over this list to see if there are other 
things in the works, but the wiki didnt mention anything for .20 anyway.

The idea would be to have an icecast server running on the backend, available 
through a PHP or cgi page. this page would accept a Mhz number as an 
argument, tune the FM tuner to the specified station, and then either 
supplies the stream, or sends a forward to the address the icecast server is 
streaming from.

for example, the URL could be of the form http://backend/tune.cgi?102.7
this would tune the FM tuner to 102.7 FM and then either forward to 
http://backend:7888 (the icecast server is presumably running on that port) 
or stream the encoded audio itself. if no mhz argument is provided, the 
scirpt does not tune, but just provides the stream, thus allowing multiple 
frontends to listen without stepping on eachother.

the stream could be tuned by any shoutcast capable player; mythstream for now, 
the new mythmusic support for streams could do it too. A script that runs 
once on the backend could autodetect channels (by stereo lock perhaps?) and 
add them to the DB for whatever front end plugin is avalable, mythstream for 
now, and perhaps mythmusic when it supports it.

 this way it is as easy as selecting the station from a menu to play it. 
shoutcast metadata could inform the listener of the MHZ of the station, and 
if the tuner and script supports it, the callsign from stations that 
broadcast that digitally. best of all, this is completely network enabled, so 
it could be played on any frontend, even multiple frontends at once.

i may try to get this going, if school permits, it seems pretty 
straightforward to me. 

any thoughts?