Re: [Davedina-devel] Some random ideas/questions

[Thomas V. S. <th...@ur...>]

Hello,

> -is the VCR software hardware specific or does a video4linux-supported tuner 
> suffice? (I'd like to use the € 59 Terratec TerraTValue tuner card)

the vcr software works with any v4l device.  You'll probably just need to 
change the card option in your modules.conf

> -is there an apt-rpm repository for DD yet? This would greatly facilitate 
> installing and updating the software.

There is one locally here in test, it'll probably go online together with 
the server it's on.  Need to mail the people responsible for that ;)

> -have you checked out OpenPVR ? 
> (http://www.funktronics.ca/openpvr/wiki/FrontPage) - they are also building 
> an "open" PVR (hence the name)

Yes, we're in contact, discussing some things.  He says he doesn't like 
his gui, I still need to check out his code some more.

> -feature wishlist: built-in streaming server (access *your* cds and/or tv shows 
> at work)

It'd be easy to add something like icecast.  As to the usefulness, I'm not 
sure.  Not that many DSL users can stream more than about 100 kbit 
upstream ;)

Internally, in the house, all of our computers can access all the media 
through either NFS or samba, which is more than enough for us.  So we're 
not working on the media server yet, but feel free to add it !

> -feature wishlist: program remotely: mail/sms/surf to your box: "record MTV 
> from 22 to 24h"

Yes, that'd be handy to have.  Right now I ssh to the box and add it to 
cron.  We looked at webvcr, but it's not actively maintained and I see a 
better future for stuff like XMLTV.

> -feature wishlist: Talk to other DDs via the internet. Eg.:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Monday, 8 o'clock: User John has recorded "Friends", as has user Marc.
> User John is watching the show, and skips minutes 10 to 13 and 18 to 22, as 
> this are commercials.
> User John's box is connected to the internet, and uploads this information to 
> the DD network (whatever that may be).
> (Maybe this earns him some credits which he can use to access other features ?)

This would be nice, but hard to get right technologically, and very 
questionable legally ;) It would be a great add-on, but it'll take time to 
get right.

> 
> 			Distributed Audio Rating SYstem
>                         -------------------------------
> 
> When generating playlists, you've got several options:

> Con: Very, very much work needed

it actually is not that much work.  Especially compared to rating 
transitions.  Would be nice to have some players support rating though.

> Concept:
> 
> Every song has got "friends" and "foes". Transitions are only made between 
> friends. The system assumes that:
> 
> friends of friends are friends
> friends of foes are foes
> foes of friends are foes

> foes of foes are friends

Especially the last one seems wrong.  If you really want to apply this 
system, you'll see it fall apart really quickly because if the 
relationship is a few levels down things will start to look weird.

It basically assumes that your whole music collection can be divided into 
two groups, A and B, where each member of A will be a friend of A, and 
each A will be a foe of B.  What you have actually done is just cut the 
group of songs available for play in two (possibly unequal) halves.
(I hope I got my math and logics right here ;))

Unless you mean something like, only check my direct friends.  But then 
you again need to do a lot of ratings and thus your advantage is lost.

> It also makes it possible to say "start with dance music and be at Metallica 
> after one hour"... given there's a "way" in the friends-friends chain to go to 
> Metallica.

Yes, but it won't be making  any sort of gradual translation to do this, 
unless again you only involve direct relationships.

> This information could be stored on the DD network (a la CDDB) and be used by 
> other users. Songs are linked to MP3s/OGGs/CDs/whatever using CDDB, filenames 
> or manual input.

I am designing a database structure that will hopefully succeed where CDDB 
failed, namely in uniquely identifying songs.  I want ALL relevant 
information in this database : who did the original song, what other 
versions of this song are available, what samples are in it, and so on.  
It should also make it possible to identify double tracks (two songs on 
one cd track), and so on.  And it should be able to identify your 
actual music content using fingerprints (luckily there's code out there 
that does this). All good ideas but they will take a lot of time to 
implement.

> This ideas are sketchy, might not even be useful or practical, they are just 
> some random toughts after more than a month of exams... (3 to go, keep your 
> fingers crossed). 

Heh, good luck !

Thomas

-- 

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