[mythtv-users] lightweight TV user-interface

[Dewey Smolka]

On 12/7/05, Jason Baker <baker29 at cs.purdue.edu> wrote:
>
>
> MythTV looks like a very slick system (the program guide and MythVideo
> library look especially appealing), but it also looks very hard to
> customize.

It is a very slick system, and it's not hard to customize. MythVideo
and MythMusic were the bits I was after when I started and they'll
most likely do what you want. There are a variety of ways to sort
things and display them, the imdb movie poster lookup is a very cool
touch.

> As far as I can tell, if I want to change the menu layout,
> I need to define a new theme using some weird xml-based format

Define menu layout. Do you want to change what's listed and in what
hierarchy, or customize where and how menu items are listed? For the
former, it's just plain old xml files in /usr/share/mythtv. Comment
out a menu item and it doesn't show up. Cut and paste the weather item
from infocenter.xml to mainmenu.xml and the forecast is on the main
menu instead of info center.

You can set the font and size somewhere in Settings. There are good
themes that come with MythTV, and you can figure out how to roll your
own with a bit of work (more work than I've done, but the files and
structures are all there for you to see).

> if I want to tweak the interface to the music and movie libraries, I
> need to do it in C++.

How do you mean tweak? How do you want them displayed?

> It seems to me that a user-interface based on php and javascript might
> be a lot easier to hack, and could work at least as well as MythTV.
> Such a system could even launch MythTV to access DVR functionality.

See MythWeb. It currently only really supports the DVR side -- program
guide and schedule management. There's a music module to it but I've
never been able to use for playlist management. Anyway, I'm not sure
what you're after.

> My question for the list is two-fold.  First, is my impression of
> MythTV wrong?  And second, what other programs are out there that work
> well with TVs and remote controls?

What do you want your machine to do?

If and when it does that, how do you want to expand it?

How much time and money are you willing to spend on the project?

How much do you know about Linux ? (it's not a prerequisite, but
familiarity with *nix concepts will greatly reduce the learning curve)