[mythtv-users] Anyone interested in this hardware setup feature for Mythtv?

[Sam Logen]

Hi,

I was wondering if there were any others interested in
adding an option to the hardware setup of
mythtv-setup.  If this option has been recently
introduced, then my apologies for the redundancy of
this post.  I'm testing the waters with this post,
before I decide whether to submit a bug report.

For hardware cards with drivers that don't support
encoding vbi data in their mpeg streams (such as
blackbird cards), an option would exist to pull vbi
data from the vbi device node that the driver may
create.

For those of you that don't know, the vbi data is
where closed captioning and/or teletext information is
broadcasted.  So drivers that have little to no
support inserting (splicing) the vbi into the mpeg
stream may not display CC well or at all when using
hardware capture -- and it stands to reason that the
CC won't be in the recorded programming either.

However, the driver may create (depending on the
driver) a /dev/v4l/vbi device node that will give
access to perfectly good raw vbi data which is
transmitted from the card -- but it will remain unused
because there's no option in 'mythtv-setup' to set up
an encoder card and tell mythtv to use the vbi data
from this device node instead.

Case in point, a few months ago I spoke to Mike
Krufky, a developer of v4l drivers.  He mentioned that
there's no interest in having the blackbird driver
insert vbi data into the mpeg stream since there's
already a perfectly good vbi device node that the
driver generates.  The only problem is that mythtv
doesn't yet have the ability to generate CC and
teletext from this device node while pulling the mpeg
stream from the encoder device node.

I'm wondering if there's anyone else interested in
this -- interested enough to write a patch that will
support this functionality.  It should also benefit
people with other ivtv devices that don't yet have
good vbi through mpeg2 support.

My idea is to have that option on the same page as the
setup page where you input the device node of the
encoder card.  You can then check a box telling mythtv
to take vbi data from a dedicated vbi node, then input
that node in a box, and voila, captioning for the
hearing impared or teletext, for whatever purpose that
has (I'm from US).  Perhaps even a slider bar to
synchronize the two device nodes if their data is
offset.

And if mythtv isn't accepting further feature
requests, then please consider this a workaround or
bug fix for a multitude of drivers that do not, and
possibly will not ever, have this ability.

Best regards,
Sam



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