[mythtv-users] Why cant we make a STB?

[Mark Knecht]

On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 7:31 AM, Robert McNamara
<robert.mcnamara at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There are still numerous realities being ignored by the people the
> people desperate to do this, all of which have been mentioned already.
>  I'll try to distill them yet again here.  First, Sigma would have to
> allow the source for controlling their board to be open sourced and
> distributed freely.  Second, someone would need to volunteer to do the
> hardware design.  Third, someone would need to express the
> desire/capability/time to adapt myth to the platform.  Fourth, someone
> would need to front the cost of prototype device fabrication.  Then,
> someone would need to pay for any governmentally mandated
> testing/certification necessary in EACH locale where one would want to
> sell them.  Finally, someone would need to step up and agree to be the
> "liable" party (if it burns down someone's house, who gets sued?  You,
> me, the devs?).
>
> Each of these has a varying degree if liklihood, from "*maybe*
> possible" to "Hahaha you must be joking."  IMO the things which I will
> grant you as remotely possible are finding devs to do the software and
> hardware work pro-bono.  The things which I think you will hear either
> crickets or laughter on are volunteers to take on the manufacturing
> costs, testing costs, and legal liability, and from Sigma in open
> sourcing the API for their chip.  When those things happen (all of
> them) I will eat my hat and order five.
>
> But I'm not anticipating eating my hat.  ;)
>
> Robert

Even beyond all the reality checks you are very correctly pointing out
I'd vote for seeing a bullet list of what features the group thinks
are actually being discussed here and what might be in a machine like
this. I've not followed this thread all that closely but I can promise
you that any thread with now more than 70 responses will not have a
clear, concise, agreed upon spec at the end of it.

Someone truly interested in this topic might take an hour and write up
what they think the product is. Is it a low cost Myth backend? Does it
have a cable decoder built in? Is it low power? Does it have internal
or external storage for recordings? What does it cost? If no one is
interested in writing a spec for this then my experience is the
product won't move forward. Maybe it's 2 or 3 different products of
which 1 might eventually be chosen. I don't know.

All I'm saying is that it's easy for technical lists to get excited
about technical things - PCs, chips, MPEG specs - and we've had people
talking about chips, development kits, manufacturing - but when it
comes to designing a product there needs to be a perfectly clear
description of what the thing is before user types will even consider
says 'Yeah, I'd buy that if you made it.'

Cheers,
Mark