[mythtv] Introduction LONG (was Re: Interesting Comparison)

Aaron Howard archanoid at gmail.com
Fri Mar 3 17:20:57 UTC 2006


On Fri, 2006-03-03 at 10:44 +0000, Green, Bob wrote:
> Anyway I digress; my view (for what it's worth) is that we should be
> openminded about any new developments, large or small that in any way
> overlap MythTv's raison d'etre. We can't believe that we have a
> monopoly on good ideas. As soon as we stop looking outward, we end up
> with a product that is in danger of becoming stale. Give this guy a
> chance. We might hate his offering, we might like it - who knows, but
> whatever we do, we should encourage this sort of thing rather than
> flame it. 

I'm going to take this opportunity to introduce myself.  I've been
lurking on the list for a couple of weeks.  My name is Aaron Howard.  I
have been "following" MythTV development for years (loosely).  I have
zero experience developing multi-media anything and even less with C++.
Nevertheless, I do have years of experience developing different types
of software (mostly just custom business apps) in various languages.

With that out of the way, I'd like to say that mythtv at zacglen.com.au
would have likely had a much gentler, welcoming response had he merely:

1) introduced himself;
2) said he wrote some software he is quite proud of that he thinks
replicates a large portion of MythTV functionality in 1731 lines of
perl; and,
3) invited the members of this list to take a look at it, critique it,
and see if there was anything they could glean from his techniques to
streamline MythTV a bit.

Instead, his initial message to the list was (intended or not) full of
bravado and a tone of superiority.  Given that recent studies indicate
50% of e-mail communication is misinterpreted, it's wise to err on the
side of caution and overtly humble oneself when introducing oneself to a
new group online.  Some people do not do so well communicating
subtleties or picking up on them.  I've met a few people with Asperger's
Syndrome who are highly intelligent but come across much like
mythtv at zacglen.com.au because their particular disorder inhibits their
ability to interact socially.  

My initial thought when reading the initial "Interesting Comparison"
message was: "who does this guy think he is?" and I did get a kick out
of the responses.  I guess my point is: yes, the list should keep an
open mind and MythTV developers should welcome new ideas.  But they
shouldn't have to put up with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who thinks
they're the greatest computer genius since Alan Turing, especially when
they represent themselves as such.

Okay, so that's a long winded introduction.  I think if I were an
Infocom game, the first command I ever received would have been "maximum
verbosity".

Now for a serious question to the developers (also unfortunately a
verbose one): I wish to add a feature to MythTV.  I wish to do this work
myself, not bothering any of you except for advice because I'm mostly
clueless.  I have an itch and I want to scratch it.

I would like to add channels to MythTV.  Think of it like this: I can
record my favorite shows from TV and rip my DVDs to use as content for
making my own TV channels.  What I want to do is make multiple
playlists, each playlist acting as a channel.  Then, have a process that
starts randomly at some point in each playlist *simultaneously* and
allows me to use a remote to switch between the playlists just like
changing channels on live TV.  

The idea is to make my own "Simpsons" channel, "Disney" channel, "Action
Movies" channel, "home movies" channel, etc. because I (and I think a
lot of other people too) enjoy flipping through the channels on TV to
find something marginally entertaining to watch.  I do this more often
than watching the scads of DVDs I own, even though there's seldom much
worth watching on TV.  But if I could make my own "channels" with the
content I have, the chances something's on that I *like* at any given
moment goes way up.

The problem I see with this is: it would take a lot of horsepower to
simultaneously decode a dozen or more mpeg (or whatever) videos which
would seem to make this infeasible.  BUT, (now for my question) is it
possible to only decode the ACTIVE video from the currently selected
channel/playlist and merely move a current pointer forward each second
in the remaining ones?  Envision opening 12 mpeg videos, picking one to
start playing and once per second moving the current position forward
one second in the other 11.  Then, a button on a remote is pushed to go
up one, which switches to a different mpeg video and immediately starts
decoding/playing it at the current position, and again, just moves the
current position forward 1 second each second in the remaining 11.

What I'm unsure of is: in order to seek forward in the remaining open
files, how much decoding has to take place?  Is it relatively CPU
intensive to seek one second forward in 11 videos at nearly the same
time?  Is it memory intensive to hold that many videos open?  Would it
work if the maximum number of "channels" or playlists was three or four?

And lastly, would it make sense to try to code this type of
functionality as a Myth plugin?  Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Like I said, I have an itch and I want to scratch it but I'm way over my
head in the a/v coding area (and for all intents and purposes a newb at
C++).  Any thoughts, advice, feedback, and/or guffaws are welcome.

Thanks,
-Aaron
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