[mythtv-users] XBMC port to Linux and Mythtv

[Bill Williamson]

On 8/22/07, Phill Edwards <philledwards at gmail.com> wrote:
> > With this great news I hope this further integrates mythtv and XBMC :)
> >
> > http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=Linux_port_project
>
> I'm not sure how it would be better than a mythfrontend. The main
> value I see in this at the moment is that booting linux on an Xbox
> takes a long time and it runs slowly, whereas the XBMC solution turns
> an Xbox into a fast booting/performing frontend to access and play
> MythTV recordings. But if you're going to have to boot up linux anyway
> the whole boot time problem is still there so you may as well go with
> mythfrontend.


IMO (and I'm sure it's shared) XBMC is FAR superior for playing back
videos and music.  It has an easy enqueue/playlist building/saving
mechanism and is a "front end only" solution.  It allows you to play
files off a network but also will:
-find local files
-publish those files using uPnP
-find any other XBMC's on the network (or other uPnP servers) and make
their contents browsable.

This means that while you can store everything on a backend network
share it also works just as well finding content on different XBMCs.

This is something mythtv sorely lacks.  My biggest complaint about
Myth is that it's still not sure what's the backend and what's the
frontend.  Mythvideo "run" on the frontend, but the video list is
shared onto the backend.  The same is true with mythmusic.

In a perfect world myth frontends would only connect on a single port
to the mythbackend, and wouldn't need NFS/mysql/etc.  In a
super-perfect world, mythbackend would be a uPnP server with either
myth-specific extensions for liveTV and scheduling or by using a
second "control" port to speak a myth specific protocol (I know work
is ongoing for uPnP).

I LOVE mythtv, and know that it's a labor of love and sweat, so don't
mean this as random bashing, but the overall systems architecture of
myth has seemingly evolved and never set down and designed.