[mythtv-users] Semi-OT: Democracy In Myth: Problems?

Ivan Kowalenko ivan.kowalenko at gmail.com
Thu May 25 16:07:22 UTC 2006


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On May 25, 2006, at 08.01, Brian Wood wrote:

>
> On May 24, 2006, at 11:46 PM, Ivan Kowalenko wrote:

[snip]

>> Third is the controversial one. It's a BitTorrent client. Last I
>> checked, there was some kind of moratorium on the use of P2P
>> technology in Myth, for fear of it being used for illegal activities
>> (thus making Myth a target for the anti-piracy police) ... or
>> something like that. However, I'm wondering, in the case of Democracy
>> (and similar systems), where the use of P2P technology is completely
>> legal, is it possible that an exception could be made?
>>
>> I'm seriously wondering this, because it could be a serious stumbling
>> block for some IPTV clients in Myth (which is something Myth could
>> really use).
>
> I agree with you that video delivered via the internet would be a
> great addition to Myth. With the release of the first "Open Movie"
> other legitimate uses of P2P are happening.
>
> But the fact remains that the "anti-piracy police" (as you so aptly
> put it) are a definite problem, and it is an unfortunate fact that
> any P2P capability in Myth would certainly be mis-used in many cases.
> With its commercial skip capability Myth is a target that the APP
> would love to have a "legitimate" reason to go after.
>
> I don't know what the answer is, but I certainly understand the
> reasons for keeping P2P clients out of Myth. I guess such capability
> would need to be a separate and "rogue" stream of Myth development,
> though perhaps developments such as you bring up might make it of
> more interest to those of us who have no desire to steal content.

Perhaps, then, in this case, there should be some direct contact  
between whoever wants to develop a MythDemocracy plug-in (I can't  
code, sorry), and the Democracy people themselves. Perhaps a special  
build of Democracy that works only as a back-end. A headless  
Democracy program, that must be installed, and running, separately  
from MythTV. This back-end of Demo would contain the downloaders, and  
RSS aggregators for the channels. The only part that would be  
integrated into Myth, via a plug-in, would be the front-end, which  
would handle interaction with the back-end, such as playback,  
manually choosing new programs to download, adding channels, etc. It  
doesn't seem too inconceivable that something like this could be  
developed. And I'm sure that the Democracy guys wouldn't mind, too  
much, having their program altered so that it can be integrated into  
a fully functional home media app (I mean, I'm sure they'd HATE  
reaching a wider audience).

The ultimate hack, though, would be finding a way to integrate the  
Democracy acquired videos with the Myth recorded television shows.  
The goal of Democracy is to be its own television network, where  
everything is VoD, and user customizable. Problem with that option,  
though, would be that we'd have to end up integrating parts of  
MythVideo into the Internal player. Shows like Ctrl+Alt+Chicken, and  
Systm have Theora videos that can (and are) downloaded, in addition  
to XviD/DivX, and H.264 (in a QuickTime wrapper). But this is all  
stuff we'd have to worry about later (and is completely optional).
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