MythTV Port
 

EDIT: Please see the new thread on the initial port

Hi everyone!

Inspired by the QT4 port and running the UI over SSH on the n810, I decided I was going to try to port MythTV to OS2008. Yes I'm aware of mobile mythtv, but it's not a substitute for a real frontend, and I don't see any reason why not to use the full frontend!

To make life "easy" I decided to try to port the mythtv-QT4 branch, which only needs QT4 (like the next version of mythtv 0.22 will). At the moment the branch works fine with mythtv 0.21 servers.

In the end it turns out the maemo QT4 libqt4-sql port doesn't include mysql support! So I had to recompile QT4 and add it in, in addition I have been working on porting QT3, and have it compiling, but have a minor bug in the packaging to fix before I can release that. So at this point I'll probably be going back and looking at MythTV 0.21 with QT3 done.

I've got a preliminary port of both the backend and frontend together in the past few days. I've only tested out the frontend so far and I have some teaser pics:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2317/...f14587f3f3.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2047/...72f927349e.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2221/...52f65c3806.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2267/...13429d89ab.jpg

The UI seems to be working fine and is fast and responsive (sorry for the ugly theme, but it is the default for some reason - I much prefer mythcenter). However live previews aren't showing (although from the log it looks like they are trying to play).

Similarly playing video using XV isn't showing either. There also isn't any audible audio:

This particular recording is way too high a bitrate/res but I've tried a 320x240 1000kb/s recording with the same result. I have also tried a very small RTJpeg transcode which should have been the best bet and it didn't work either, so this is definitely not a question of the n810 being able to play the video.

This might actually just be a bug of the current svn version of mythtv-qt4 in fact, key is:

This is an error in the udp signal notifier, so it looks like it's hanging when waiting for the network stream.

Anyway I'm starting up a project on the garage for it, and as soon as that project is approved I'll probably start to post some code. I'd greatly appreciate it if anyone around here who knows more about the DSP and video on the n810 helped me look into things at that point.

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Yani

Just some words of encouragement rather than any real help. This is extremely good news. I currently just stream my recordings using mediaserv, but a full frontend would be wonderful. I also use VNC for a lot of control of the frontend including setting recordings and starting user jobs.

Any chance of a early release, just for control purposes.

Cheers

Gaz

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Thanks Gaz! :)

I'll probably release something experimental when the project gets some hosting space on the maemo garage, I'll post the link here when I do.

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

shiny! But not sure why you'd want to port the backend though, can't exactly record can you?

even without playback this would be cool for scheduling recordings, better than mythweb. and if video and music playback could be achieved then awesome.

And I was planning on doing an upgrade to .21 this weekend anyway :)

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Yani,

this is great news. I would be happy already to have the frontend to schedule recordings and be able to delete recordings. I already use the N800 as a remote for my MythTV client using the "irreco" tool which supports the TCPIP interface of myth frontend.

Keep up the good work.

PS: I am using two S100 (zenega) boxes as mythfrontend

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Wow, seems really good news. But, as a newbie that I am, I should ask: how are we gonna be allowed to watch cable TV if we don’t have tuner cards for the tablets? Or: what could we do with MythTV on our tablets? :confused:

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Yani

About the lack of video playback. Is the problem not that the video has a bitrate of 5000kb/s+? I found that Mplayer will not play anything reliable more than about 1000Kb/s. I have several downloaded movies which are about 800kb/s which work great, but DVDs ripped down using myth to about 1500kb/s will not play reliably. They just miss loads of frames and skip all over the place on my N800 (os2008).

It may be worth transcoding some recordings down to a size known to be playable on the N8x0 and then try. It may work.

Gaz

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Hey, this is really cool! I have been intimidated by other efforts to use MythTV on my N800, and this one looks like it will be a familiar interface for me to use.

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Great! i was waiting for this.

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

The n810 and n800 have USB host support, and there are a lot of USB ATSC/DVB digital tuners that would take no CPU power at all to record off, so I was thinking there is the possibility of using one as a light-weight backend. There are also some SD MPEG2 encoding TV tuners (like the PVRUSB2) that would work well.

Really I'm hoping I can port the backend to the n770 and use my old n770 as a lightweight slave backend, but I'd have to use a powered usb hub for sure with the 770.

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

lol.. yeah, I realized that I was expecting a bit much from the n810 with 5000kb/s, but I've been experimenting and even with a 1000kb/s 320x240 mpeg2 it's not playing. I also tried an extremely small RTJpeg which should have the least cpu requirements and it's not working either :-(.

I'm going to try mpeg4 anyway, but I don't see it working. I'm not surprised that I need to do some porting of the XV code, but it would have been a nice surprise if it had worked off the bat!

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

MythTV is by design a network application, even when you only have mythtv installed on one computer, it is using two separate processes, one the (master in this case) backend to record and another the frontend to view. This makes it extremely flexible. You could have the n810 as a mythfrontend and your desktop as a backend, or even the n810 as a backend and the desktop as a frontend!

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Thank you very much, yani. Certainly when available it will be one of my favourite apps. Gonna install MythTV on my CPU. It just gets tablets even better.

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Hmmm. regarding Yani's comments about using the backend and usb tuners, and hoping to compile for the 770. Before I got an 800, I had a usb hard disk working with my 770 for music storage.

If the backend does work with the 770, a fun experiment would be to modify a powered usb hub with the power injector fix, and hook up some usb tuners, and a large 3.5" disk in a usb enclosure.

If it worked, it would make a fantastic low powered backend solution.
Obviously we would need MySQL as well - don't know if that's been ported yet, or how easily it would compile. USB-DVB V4L drivers shouldn't take too much work though should they?

I have given serious consideration to seeing if I could get Samba and NFS working so I could use my 770 in the style above as a NAS for my network.

I am sooo looking forward to running mythfrontend on my tablet.
Gaz

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Not thought of it in that way. But then I've got so many machines running 24/7 that I just plug another card in.

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

There is a full version of mysql in the maemo extras repository, however the server has some rather shady requirements (bash which uninstalls most of the base system), and it is a much older version of mysql (4.0) than would work seamlessly with mythtv. Hence I'm working on porting mysql5 or at least 4.1 if only for the newer libmysql15 to build mythtv against instead of libmysql12.

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Quick update - I've ported mysql 5, and the project has been created. I'm uploading the mysql port now, and I also have to figure out how to create a repository.

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/mythtv/

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

Thanks Yani.

Will there be a mythtv package, or do we need to download and compile from source?

thanks Gaz

EDIT: just rechecked, and there is more packages iin the garage - ignore my impatience!

Re: MythTV Port (warning: teaser pics inside)
 

I've posted some binaries! See more in this follow-up post:

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=18270