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

[Dave C. <de...@co...>]

Brian J. Murrell wrote:
>>Capture hardware: Pinnacle Studio Pro PCI (bttv driver)
> 
> Why that one?  Cheap?

Yep, I picked it up for $30 (and it has stereo audio and came with the 
remote, as well as an FM tuner I don't care about.)

>>Capture software: NuppleVideo (not the best compression, but the a/v 
>>sync is good, unlike others I've messed with so far)
> 
> CVS versions of mp1e are good.  NVrec has great a/v sync for divx,
> div4, ffmpeg codecs.

I've been trying to keep up with NVrec; it's nice that it puts the same 
front-end (cmd-line) interface on the various encoders since it makes it 
easier to compare, but I haven't played with the recent ones lately.

>>today, but I have hopes that cheematv's code will be available for this
> 
>                                ^^^^^^^^
> What is this?

It figures... I just tried to go to his web site and now I can't reach 
it (www.cheema.com/vcr).  I added it to the OpenPVR wikki a few weeks 
ago; sorry if it's gone forever now. :-(  It was a nice web front end to 
view a TV schedule, and click on a program to schedule a recording of 
it.  Exactly the kind of thing that my wife would have no problem 
understanding and using to select shows to record.  Also you could see 
what was previously recorded and click on it to stream it to your 
computer for viewing. (It was designed for a client-server approach to 
PVR, and he was/is doing his viewing on a PC, not a TV, but the schedule 
browsing was nice and clean (just text and tables, no distracting 
graphics etc).

> Have you looked at my scheduler?  It still needs some glue around it
> in terms of XMLTV data fed into it, etc.  but the benefit is that it
> works with repeated programming and preferece settings to resolve
> conflicts.

Yes, I'm eager to try this out.  Right now my recording box is down 
until I get a new case and hard drive next week..

> Why X?  You don't need it.  Framebuffer works great, and DirectFB will
> probably be even nicer for OSD etc.

Well I tried framebuffer first but I had all kinds of problems with the 
i810 framebuffer driver.  Granted that was several months ago so maybe 
things are different now.  If I can get it working, you're right that 
DirectFB sure looks nice :-)

> But if your scheduler knows which programs are repeats, or more
> accurately which ones you have seen it won't record them again.  My
> scheduler has a database of "seen" programs.  It does not update it
> yet when it records a program however.  I do that manually.

Well yes, but in the "X-Files marathon" case there are a TON of X-Files 
episodes that I have in fact seen, but there is no way I'm going to 
manually enter 8 seasons worth of data into my PVR just so it won't 
won't record them again.  (There's lots of stuff that I've seen in my 
lifetime that my PVR will have no clue that I've seen since it never 
recorded it.)

> No.  Specific timeslots is ugly.  I don't want to have to reprogram
> everytime they shift the program.  Like last night, they decided to
> move Survivor to Wednesday from Thursday.  If I am not paying
> attention and I program by timeslot rather just when something is on
> that I have not seen before, I would have missed it.

Agreed; I just didn't expect this feature as part of the "base 
functionality" I am trying to get to.  I'd be thrilled to have it of 
course. :-)

- Dave