[mythtv] Centerstage for mac

[Andrew Kimpton]

Jon Bishop wrote:
> Was just wondering if anybody had checked out the centerstage  
> project. Might be some very useful code there to implement a OSX  
> compatible backend?
>
> http://centerstageproject.com
>
> There is also a very in depth wiki on development that has a lot of  
> information. Just thought it might be a good resource for you guys to  
> make myth even better... I would like to have a backend running on an  
> xserve raid system eventually :-D
>
>   
I've looked at the project from time to time (though not particularly 
recently). I don't think centerstage is advanced enough to actually help 
MythTV on Mac OS. There certainly is some nice UI work being done but 
Myth's backend/capture infrastructure is far more advanced and the 
primary reason I think there's not more Mac OS X backends out there is 
because of a lack of open driver support for the common Macintosh video 
capture hardware (like EyeTV) and the lack of Mac OS drivers for cards 
like the Haupaugge products (though I note that SageTV's plans for a Mac 
OS version might change that a little). Remember too - do you really 
want to devote 2-3 thousand dollars worth of hardware like an XServe or 
Mac Pro to being a backend ? Having such a device for just the PCI slots 
to put (unsupported right now) video cards in it seems expensive to me. 
Sure  there's lots of drive space in such a machine but NAS storage (if 
the performance is there) is probably much cheaper. A Mac Mini with USB, 
Firewire or network attached tuners (see below) and a large firewire 
drive is a much cheaper option and can be an integrated backend/frontend 
which won't look at all out of place in a family room.

For the record you can run a Mac OS X backend just fine with SVN-head 
(and I think 0.20-fixes too though I track head). I run a master Mac OS 
X backend with firewire attached cable box and record a lot of HD shows 
from CBS, NBC etc that way. I also wrote (there's a ticket for it but 
the code is not yet integrated into SVN) support for the Plextor TV-402 
which is a USB2 composite (and Tuner) capture device and I run a slave 
Mac OS X backend with that attached. I also (yesterday) received a 
HDHomeRun and in my initial experiments with the Windows VLC client I'm 
very impressed and rather suspect that I'll drop my firewire attached 
settop box in favour of the HDHomeRun.
> ~Jon

Andrew 8-)