[mythtv] New MythTV interface announced!!

Sun Jul 5 09:48:05 UTC 2009

Hi Daniel,

Excellent feedback thanks for your reply. We will look into UPNP control
point. I think this should be the long term aim for MythTV as it is a
standard. However this part of uPNP still requires an interface being
created for your specific tablet device; I am sure this will happen given
time, but the standard has been released for 5 years and yet I can only find
a couple of pieces of software (after a very brief search) targetting a
couple of platforms; neither have a compelling UI.

Feedback from other contributors have also shown how we can use the Telnet
interface (at least for TV/recording playback via altering the OSD UI),
although video, music, ripping, weather and other plugins would require
either extensions to the telnet interface to permit command control of the
plugin (rather than key-press control); OR implement the playback of
videos/pictures/other plugins in a custom manner - directly controlling
playback software (such as VLC/MPlayer)

I am changing the document to demote the technical architecture suggestions
and instead concentrating on the user experience; it is the developers role
to review the options for implementation and select the correct method
(technical architure will still be in the document but as example
architectures rather than specifying an architecture).

I am aware of LinuxMCE; but have you tried to get it running? I have! It is
far beyond what most people will implement and it is difficult to remove
unused options for the interface (lighting and automation). I also think the
LinuxMCE UI is awful from a visual point of view, although it is quite
usable. Finally LinuxMCE although actively developed is still some way from
moving off Ubuntu 710 and I believe they have been working on the port to
810 since Ubuntu 810s release... that's over a year.

Please bare in mind that this solution is just a design, and we are looking
for developers to help implement this; as mentioned before there is
currently a GBP£500 bounty. If serious interest was shown in developing it,
we'd lodge the bounty at an independant location/website.

The solution will be de-specced to TV/recording/video/&plugins (weather now,
others, video streams/RSS later); this is to make the solution less work;
allow a faster release and therefore more appealing to developers. Hopefully
having a release (and therefore a userbase) will encourage other developers
to create plugins for the solution.

Thanks

Richard

Thanks And Regards,

Richard Morton
07899 750400
GoogleTalk: richard.e.morton at gmail.com
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2009/7/5 Daniel Kristjansson <danielk at cuymedia.net>

> 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
>
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