[mythtv-users] Myth Ideas

[Jeff Monks]

> ie. I look for a program in my epg and see that there was a film on 
> yesterday that I would love to watch or that my box forgot to record, 
> and by clicking a button it fill fetch it from someone else, maybe in a 
> kind of bitstream way, so that it spreads the bandwidth. It could even 
> be done with an automatically generated and small transcoded 
> version.....

Bandwidth (aside from legal issues of copyright) would be a huge problem 
for any kind of Myth P2P application.  I think most people are using 
settings that are producing files of at least 1GB/hr, and I'd wager that 
more than half of us are using quite a bit higher settings than that.  
Even with transcoding, you're talking 500MB/hr for anything watchable.

Now, most broadband users have an asymmetrical setup, with a fairly 
low cap on upstream bandwidth.  Most are around 128-256kbs upload speeds.  
So that one-hour show is going to take 5 or 10 hours for me to upload to 
you, during which time you're using all my bandwidth.  Double that if two 
users want to download two different shows of mine at the same time - you 
see where that's going.

Splitting the file up ala BitTorrent won't work, either, because even if 
20 users have all recorded the same show, they have 20 different files 
that can't be merged.  User A has a PVR-250 MPEG file, user B has an 
RTJPEG at 170, user C has an MPEG-4 file with uncompressed audio...  So 
sharing bandwidth doesn't help much, unless a lot of people choose to 
download the same program from the same peer.

I would love to have a feature like this, too, but I really don't think 
it's going to happen, for reasons of both legal and technical nature.  I'd 
rather not have such a feature than see MythTV development slowed by 
having to fight the inevitable lawsuits it would bring.