Some lessons from MythTV
Posted May 15, 2006 3:10 UTC (Mon) by
Andyt123 (guest, #37747)
Parent article:
Some lessons from MythTV
Im not one to add my 2cents but reading this makes me want to comment. Ive
been using Mythtv for around 3 years, I think they were around the .14
release then. I use to upgrade to cvs once a week. Things were good then,
it was still hard to setup but was not to bloated like it is today. I dont
use Mythtv anymore, why? because there is no direction, what do the
developers want in the end? a full blown window manager with multimedia
capabilities? Useless features keep getting added and the things that
matter get left out. Who needs opengl effects like fading? What about when
it comes to actually watching TV? First it takes upto 10secs to start
playing and on an interlaced TV, like most people use the picture is no
where near as good as the cheapest stb's on the market.
The dependencies the program relies on is a joke, Mysql? wtf??!! then you
got X servers, Window manages, QT ect....
Does mythtv really need to be so bloated to watch TV, movies, play music
ect ? Look at vdr, I can run vdr on a 600mhz celeron with 64meg of ram
with software decoding and it all fits on a 128mb flash disk with room to
spare. Look at the dreambox, 200mhz ppc cpu, 32mb ram, I know it has a
hardware decoder but all the osd and graphics are done by cpu, its not as
pretty as mythtv but it work and who need pretty to watch TV.
The Mythtv GUI should be smaller, and have no X dependency. DirectFB is a
perfect output method for Mythtv, even though there is allready support
for DirectFB its quite old, doesnt work with the gui and will no longer
compile with latest svn. What about supporting some hardware mpeg cards ?
As of the last 3 months I do not use Mythtv anymore. Ive made the switch
to VDR and am happy with the features it supplys. With VDR's Softdevice
output you can software decode mpeg2 ( actully any codec ffmpeg
supports )and output the decoded frames to directfb with sync on Vblank so
you get good motion with no tearing. If a Matrox G4x0 is used with
interlaced TV you have an allmost perfect picture with no scaling and good
motion ( no jerking and tearing ) and you dont have to run the
deinterlacer to make it look good because the output method cant interlace
properly.
I know Mythtv is only at .19 and vdr has beed in development much longer
and is at a stable 1.4.0 but can you see how large it will be when it gets
to 1.0.0.
I just think the Mythtv developers need to take a good look at the video
output methods, shouldnt this be number 1 on the list? I guess when
everyone has got progressive scan TV's the problems with interlaced TV
will go away, but its going to be some years yet.
Dont get me wrong, I like Mythtv, I wouldnt comment if I didnt but I also
want to watch TV and Mythtv doesnt let me do that with ease.
What I would like to see is the frontend gui to cater for embedded
systems. I would like to run mythtv frontend on top of DirectFB with no X
server on the system, take out the Mysql database and go for something
lite, have a builtin db or even just a config file. Some support for
hardware mpeg decoders like DXR3, FF DVBS and PVR350. Ok PVR350 works
allready but you still need bloody X!!!!!! as Mythtv svn wont compile with
qt embedded anymore! DXR3 and FF DVBS are only decoders so you cant run
GUI on then even though xine manages to put its gui on dxr3.
By losing X and Mysql you can customise your system to startup in
under 10 secs instead of the nearly 60+secs it needs. Then Mythtv will be
like usefull PVR.
I could go allday but I dont have time.
Just my 2c
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