[mythtv] [RFC] MythNews Multimedia Support

[Kevin Kuphal]

Brad DerManouelian wrote:
> On Nov 9, 2006, at 9:49 AM, Kevin Kuphal wrote:
>
>   
>> I have been working recently to patch MythNews to support  
>> multimedia aspects of RSS.  So far I have added
>>
>> * Support for display of <image> tag on a feed including caching  
>> image locally
>> * Improved HTML parsing of descriptions by not stripping everything  
>> in tags or CDATA sections
>> * Support for display of <media:thumbnail> tag on an article
>> * Launching mplayer for streaming <enclosure> and <media:player>  
>> tags (only tested with video)
>> * Added video sources for the below video sites
>>
>> Right now it works well enough to display video from YouTube,  
>> Google Video, G4TV and Cnet TV.  With a recent version of mplayer  
>> the streaming works.
>> Issues:
>>
>> * Sometimes mplayer takes a long time to set up streaming and I  
>> don't know a good way to check the status of a shelled command  
>> (help here would be appreciated) to either show information about  
>> it or kill it if it hangs
>> * The Internal player can play the files just fine if downloaded  
>> but I don't know how to use it to stream from HTTP sources
>>
>> Future:
>>
>> * Testing both audio and video enclosures
>> * Graphical indicators on the feed display of the presence of an  
>> enclosure and it's type
>> * Dynamic thumbnail display that can change height/width to handle  
>> different thumbnail sizes
>> * Subscription to feeds so that enclosures can be downloaded  
>> locally for playback instead of streaming (I could use some advice  
>> here as well.  Should this be integrated to "Watch Recordings" or  
>> done only via MythNews where it just locally plays instead of  
>> streams if available).
>>
>> I'd love some comments on this patch.  It seems a very natural  
>> extension to MythNews and with the popularity of podcasts and  
>> services like YouTube it should be a nice enhancement.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Kevin
>>     
>
> This sounds very cool, but I doubt it will be considered for  
> inclusion due to the dependency on mplayer. This is why mythstream  
> was never included as an "official" plugin. If you could get it to  
> work with the Internal video player or create a config for which  
> external player to use for that content, you'd have a better shot of  
> getting it in.
>   
The hardcoding is temporary right now.  It will be configurable just 
like MythVideo so I don't see that as much of a problem.  Ideally I 
would like to use Internal and that should work well for subscribed 
content once that is in place but the streaming is problematic unless 
somone knows how to use the Internal player to stream HTTP content.

Kevin