[mythtv] New MythTV interface announced!!

[Daniel Kristjansson]

On Sun, 2009-06-28 at 19:32 +0100, Richard Morton wrote:
> We have just announced a project to build a complimentary frontend
> interface for MythTV.
> 
> Summary project information can be found at
> www.mythtv.org/wiki/mythtouchmote.
> The idea is for MythTV to fully support the use of Touchscreen devices
> as the primary interface to MythTV; going way beyond what is available
> currently with programs which simply send keystroke commands to the
> standard front-end telnet interface.
> Devices in mind include Nokia-N800-series (they are cheap on eBay),
> iPhones, Android phones, UMPCs, tablets and the like.
> Comments on the specification are welcome. People interested in this
> solution who are willing to contribute to the bounty and developers,
> or development teams, interested in working on bringing the interface
> into reality.
> www.mythtv.org/wiki/mythtouchmote

I like the idea of a HTML rendered remote for the frontend, but I think
you will never succeed if you try to implement a new frontend at the
same time. The frontend is not as simple a beast as it may appear to
be.

FYI Eliminating the overlay on the mythfrontend during playback is easy,
just create a new OSD theme without any visible elements.

If you just want a nice remoting interface for MythTV via your N800...
this already exists in LinuxMCE (it uses the telnet interface which as
you already know has some problems.) If you want a better interface,
or one not tied to LinuxMCE, the path of least resistance is to improve
the telnet interface. We've discussed adding secure authentication
before, and you could write a patch for this one weekend if you just
read up on the subject a few nights in the proceeding week. Then just
add any functionality you need to the telnet interface.

There are two other options which are a little more complicated, but
allow for a large selection of devices to be used to control MythTV.
The first is to implement a UPNP Remote UI renderer, see:
  http://www.upnp.org/standardizeddcps/remoteui.asp
Then a wide selection of DNLA devices will be able to control MythTV
including PC's running UPNP controlpoint software. This also allows
to implement your own "MythTV UPNP" protocol, but of course you would
want to implement something common like HTTP/HTML or VNC first.
The second is to implement another MythTV web server in the MythTV
frontend, but this one serving up the UI. You would then just connect
to the local telnet interface from within this http server, so you
would still need to correct any problems with the telnet interface.

-- Daniel