[Openpvr-devel] On-going development; ideas, etc.

[Kulagowski, R. <RKu...@Th...>]

It's good to see that progress is being made.  I read your description of
your idea of a brute-force versus optimized scheduler.  Good reading.

If you have the time, can you detail what parts and pieces you are
considering at this point?  Which encoder and encoder technology are you
going with?

For the scheduling algorithm, have you considered the case where they may be
multiple encoders available?

Have you made any consideration of obtaining guide data?  Right now I'm
aware of at least three ways of obtaining guide data:
1) xmltv from sourceforge
2) tvlisting at cherrynebula.net
3) vbi - there are at least some TVs and VCRs that can obtain guide data
encoded in the video signal

When I was thinking about all the things that I think would be baseline, I
thought of these in the following order:

o  Rock-solid A/V sync.  If it can't maintain sync over a long period of
time it's going to be too annoying to use.
o  Set-top / black-box functionality.  The wife doesn't want to know
anything about linux.  Needs to connect to a standard TV and look decent.
o  Tivo and Replay-like "trick play".  Pausing live TV, FF, RW, etc.  The
PowerVCR II program from CyberLink can do this already using MPEG-1 on
Windows.
o  Picking programs through the guide instead of manually.  Manual should
still be available though.
o  Sorting saved programs into categories.  Tivo doesn't do this very well,
so everything ends up in one long "What's playing".  I don't have a replay,
but I understand that it does this better.
o  Multiple tuner support, as long as there's sufficient CPU.

Things that I consider in the future:
o  Seperating capture and display functionality, so that a "super server"
can sit in a basement near all the coax and a display box can be
lightweight, diskless/fanless (quiet) in the family room.
o  Sharing of programs internally.  If you have a bunch of boxes / tuners as
opposed to a super-server, they should be able to share programs that
they've saved either through direct streaming or through file sharing.
o  Conflict resolution amongst numerous boxes.  If I need to record multiple
programs, and there's no tuner available on the box that I'm on, then hand
off the job to another recorder.
o  Adding hard drive space through the LVS.

Far future:
o  Recommendations based on what others watch.  "I see that you like
watching The Simpsons.  88% of viewers that watch The Simpsons also watch
"Farscape".  Do you want to add Farscape to your recording queue?
o  Expandable storage without shutdown / reboot.  I'm thinking of Firewire
hard drives that can be chained.

Things that I don't consider important:
o  Totally integrated functionality, like what's being done by ShowShifter
on the PC.  If I want to play a CD, I'd use my CD player.  Same thing for
DVDs, etc.
o  Sharing video over the internet.

Of course, being an "Idea guy" is easy.  The hard part is implementing!
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