Mailing List Archive

On Tue, 2007-05-15 at 15:46 -0700, Erik Warner wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to let you know that Ubuntu is starting its "Ubuntu Media
> Center" initiative, and that they are apparently choosing Elisa
> instead of MythTV:
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMediaCenterTeam
>
> Given that MythTV is way more feature-rich, stable, and powerful,
> forgoing MythTV is a terrible decision on the part of Ubuntu and its
> parent company, Canonical. MythTV is _the gold standard_ of Free/Open
> Source media centers. Both MythTV and Ubuntu have great communities,
> and they could certainly benefit from a mutual relationship.

No argument from me that MythTV is a much better media platform.

> I hope you will join me in attempting to convince the Ubuntu Media
> Center team and Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu's founder,
> http://MarkShuttleworth.com) that MythTV is the obvious choice for the
> Ubuntu Media Center.
>

...however, Ubuntu Media Center, from what I can find, is a community
project, and not under the control of Canonical. Lobbying Shuttleworth
and Canonical will have little to no effect, if that is the case.


> Thanks,
> Erik
>
> BTW: Our DRM-loving, anti-GPL, anti-Qt/KDE friends at Fluendo are the
> main culprits in this deal, as they are the ones pushing their own
> semi-proprietary product.
>

This seems to be quite a stretch. There are a number of Qt/KDE apps that
use GStreamer, and Fluendo has plenty of software out there under the
GPL. Why all the hating?

--Matt

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Erik Warner escreveu:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to let you know that Ubuntu is starting its "Ubuntu Media
> Center" initiative, and that they are apparently choosing Elisa
> instead of MythTV:

Hi.

Where did you get the information that MythTV would be dropped and
replaced by Elisa? This looks more to me like a community project.

[]s

Adilson.
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On Wed, May 16, 2007 10:46 am, Erik Warner wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to let you know that Ubuntu is starting its "Ubuntu Media
> Center" initiative, and that they are apparently choosing Elisa
> instead of MythTV:
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMediaCenterTeam
>
> Given that MythTV is way more feature-rich, stable, and powerful,
> forgoing MythTV is a terrible decision on the part of Ubuntu and its
> parent company, Canonical. MythTV is _the gold standard_ of Free/Open
> Source media centers. Both MythTV and Ubuntu have great communities,
> and they could certainly benefit from a mutual relationship.
>
> I hope you will join me in attempting to convince the Ubuntu Media
> Center team and Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu's founder,
> http://MarkShuttleworth.com) that MythTV is the obvious choice for the
> Ubuntu Media Center.
>
> Thanks,
> Erik
>
> BTW: Our DRM-loving, anti-GPL, anti-Qt/KDE friends at Fluendo are the
> main culprits in this deal, as they are the ones pushing their own
> semi-proprietary product.


Frankly, who cares? The idea of free software is to promote choice, not
stifle it. Let them use what they want, I don't think it will
significantly affect the number of mythtv users, nor the quality of the
product we love.


--
Nick Rout

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So a new player comes along & 'wows' (if you can even call it that in
the case of Elisa) people with its effects driven UI... so what?

What does that mean for mythTV? A few users find it suits their needs
& they use that rather than MythTV. No great loss.

I'm sorry but there's nothing to see here. So we 'lose' a few fickle
users. Big wow.

Other than the obvious (and rather tacky IMHO) UI effects, MythTV is
still miles ahead of many a PVR application - even ones folks pay good
money for.

Elisa hasn't yet shown any signs that it could even be a contender for
a serious PVR application - it just doesn't have the necessary
framework in place yet and that isn't going to happen overnight. I
think whoever makes the decisions made here is ill-advised if they're
being led by UI design alone.

I don't think MythTV will miss the fickle users who follow trends &
wind up overvaluing flashy interfaces.

I've seen the screencasts of Elisa's UI & the new Freevo2 UI. They
*do* look er.. nice (well, Freevo2's does at any rate) but at the end
of the day how much time do you spend watching the UI? See, you
don't. If you're about to argue that users care about UI effects I'd
try to shoot you down with "yeah, maybe they do but at the cost of
usability & functionality? Get real".

Anyway, since when was MythTV about some kind of genital measuring
test against other applications? This project - as far as I can
ascertain - has always been about fulfilling a need of the developers
& other contributors. I don't think it 'needs' users per se.

I love MythTV very much & find it hard to imagine my life without it.
I don't honestly see any of these newcomers as a threat at all. I'm a
little envious that they have a little bit of eyecandy mythtv lacks
but I can see all that's going to take to change is a bit of work. I
say 'a bit' when I mean 'quite a lot'.. but all it takes is for folks
to contribute instead of waiting around for some mythical SoC student
to mop it all up!

So really.. the thing is WHO CARES the Ubuntu Media Center team have
'dropped' MythTV anyway? They saw 'bling', were dazzled - and made
the *wrong* choice. All that glisters is not gold...

regards,
Justin

--
Justin Hornsby
Creator of ProjectGrayhem, blootube and neon-wide themes for MythTV
email: justin(dot)hornsby(at)gmail.com
web: http://www.juski.co.uk

--

Come & see MythTV at LUGRadio Live 2007, July 7th - 8th @ The
Lighthouse, Fryer Street, Wolverhampton, UK. See
http://www.lugradio.org/live
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On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 02:00 +0100, Justin Hornsby wrote:
>
> Elisa hasn't yet shown any signs that it could even be a contender for
> a serious PVR application - it just doesn't have the necessary
> framework in place yet and that isn't going to happen overnight.

I've yet to look at Elisa deeper than it's webpage fluff and
screenshots, but if they were smart (and I suppose they are) they would
leverage Myth's backend while they develop their own scheduling,
recording and storage and retrieval framework. That is, lean
development heavy on the front-end -- plan for their future as they do
it, but provide a hugely useful tool for the present using the Myth
backed. Really, backends should be a pluggable option.

They could have grander plans than myth's backend infrastructure, but
why not use it as a bridge to attract more developers by making the
project hugely more useful more quickly while they build up their
infrastructure on the backend..

> I've seen the screencasts of Elisa's UI & the new Freevo2 UI. They
> *do* look er.. nice (well, Freevo2's does at any rate) but at the end
> of the day how much time do you spend watching the UI? See, you
> don't. If you're about to argue that users care about UI effects I'd
> try to shoot you down with "yeah, maybe they do but at the cost of
> usability & functionality? Get real".

Well, Myth's video playback "widget" it not exactly something to write
home to mom about either. It does not compare to (say) mplayer in it's
ability to play material of different encodings, well. Give it certain
files and while it plays them decent enough for the most part, it sucks
as seeking in them (yeah, even with seek table) and quite often jumping
in them ends up in a few seconds of mush until another "full frame"
comes along to get things back in order.

> Anyway, since when was MythTV about some kind of genital measuring
> test against other applications? This project - as far as I can
> ascertain - has always been about fulfilling a need of the developers
> & other contributors. I don't think it 'needs' users per se.

Indeed, it does not. As long as it's scratching the itch of the
developers, who really cares if nobody else is using it.

>
> I love MythTV very much & find it hard to imagine my life without it.
> I don't honestly see any of these newcomers as a threat at all.

Why even use the word threat? Why not envision a world where the PVR
backend and frontend are actually separated by an open stable API and
you mix and match as you desire features.

Personally, I'd give my left nut to get the hell off of X on the
frontend and on to something far more sane for a PVR FE like DirectFB.
AFAIK (and please! correct me if I'm wrong), there is not a single video
card and driver in X that works as well for natively displaying
interlaced material on interlaced display as the Matrox G{400,450,550}
cards do on DirectFB. You just give the card the interlaced material
and it displays the odd and even lines properly without all this need
for de-interlacers to compensate for bad tv-out video drivers.

b.

--
My other computer is your Microsoft Windows server.

Brian J. Murrell

On 05/15/2007 09:00 PM, Justin Hornsby wrote:
> So a new player comes along & 'wows' (if you can even call it that in
> the case of Elisa) people with its effects driven UI... so what?
>
> What does that mean for mythTV? A few users find it suits their needs
> & they use that rather than MythTV. No great loss.
>
> I'm sorry but there's nothing to see here. So we 'lose' a few fickle
> users. Big wow.
>
> Other than the obvious (and rather tacky IMHO) UI effects, MythTV is
> still miles ahead of many a PVR application - even ones folks pay good
> money for.
>

Yeah, but they say Elisa will have some amazing features--like the
long-sought-after "trick mode support" offering features such as fast
forward, slow motion, and reverse playback. And, they'll have TV
viewing and PVR capabilities, including features such as time-shifting.
( http://elisa.fluendo.com/features/ )

Sounds to me like Myth's days over.

(I agree with you fully, Justin.)

Mike
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On 05/15/2007 10:33 PM, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> Well, Myth's video playback "widget" it not exactly something to write
> home to mom about either. It does not compare to (say) mplayer in it's
> ability to play material of different encodings, well. Give it certain
> files and while it plays them decent enough for the most part, it sucks
> as seeking in them (yeah, even with seek table) and quite often jumping
> in them ends up in a few seconds of mush until another "full frame"
> comes along to get things back in order.
>

Sounds like someone needs to fix his MythTV installation. Seeking in my
recordings with MythTV is /far/ better than seeking in MPlayer or xine.
And, that's with full HDTV played on a remote frontend.

> Personally, I'd give my left nut to get the hell off of X on the
> frontend and on to something far more sane for a PVR FE like DirectFB.
> AFAIK (and please! correct me if I'm wrong), there is not a single video
> card and driver in X that works as well for natively displaying
> interlaced material on interlaced display as the Matrox G{400,450,550}
> cards do on DirectFB. You just give the card the interlaced material
> and it displays the odd and even lines properly without all this need
> for de-interlacers to compensate for bad tv-out video drivers.

I'd say if anything is dead, it's not MythTV. It's the idea of using
NTSC (or PAL) for playback. Projectors, LCD's, Plasma's, DLP's, and
pretty much any new "TV" has /far/ better connection capabilities than
1953's latest and greatest.

Show me DirectFB drivers that handle 1080i and 720p better than the X
drivers and I might be interested.

Mike
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On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 00:38 -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>
> Sounds like someone needs to fix his MythTV installation.

Sure. Tell me what's broken that everything works except that seeking
just say, a single "ffwd" or "rew" can take many seconds to process.
I'll pass along your fix to the Ubuntu packaging team.

How about the "smearing" that non-mpeg2 and nuv files do when you seek
in them? Do you think that is my "broken" installation? Again, please
tell me what I should "fix" (hint: it's got nothing to do with an
individual installation -- it's crappy decoding of a media file).

> Seeking in my
> recordings with MythTV is /far/ better than seeking in MPlayer or xine.
> And, that's with full HDTV played on a remote frontend.

Are you talking about mpeg2 or "other" formats? mpeg2 seeking works
just fine. It's "other" formats I'm talking about.

> I'd say if anything is dead, it's not MythTV.

Hrm. I don't think I even used the word "dead", never mind the
implication. I still think using X for "TV"(-type) output is wrong
though.

> It's the idea of using
> NTSC (or PAL) for playback.

Sure. But it's what's prevalent in the world today, so it's what we
have to interface to.

> Projectors, LCD's, Plasma's, DLP's, and
> pretty much any new "TV" has /far/ better connection capabilities than
> 1953's latest and greatest.

If one can afford any of those.

> Show me DirectFB drivers that handle 1080i and 720p better than the X
> drivers and I might be interested.

TBH I don't know what the latest in HD output for DirectFB is as I
unfortunately had to give up my interest DirectFB when I switched to
Myth. I'd be surprised if one cannot use any of the supported hardware
at those resolutions given that the physical connection would likely be
VGA or HDMI/DVI.

How capable DirectFB is at it is actually quite a red-herring. It
doesn't make it any less wrong to use something as heavy as X for what
is relatively simple (in contrast to what X11 provides) video display
requirements. It's like driving a thumbtack with a sledgehammer.

b.

--
My other computer is your Microsoft Windows server.

Brian J. Murrell

On May 15, 2007, at 9:32 PM, Michael T. Dean wrote:

> On 05/15/2007 09:00 PM, Justin Hornsby wrote:
>> So a new player comes along & 'wows' (if you can even call it that in
>> the case of Elisa) people with its effects driven UI... so what?
>>
>> What does that mean for mythTV? A few users find it suits their
>> needs
>> & they use that rather than MythTV. No great loss.
>>
>> I'm sorry but there's nothing to see here. So we 'lose' a few fickle
>> users. Big wow.
>>
>> Other than the obvious (and rather tacky IMHO) UI effects, MythTV is
>> still miles ahead of many a PVR application - even ones folks pay
>> good
>> money for.
>>
>
> Yeah, but they say Elisa will have some amazing features--like the
> long-sought-after "trick mode support" offering features such as fast
> forward, slow motion, and reverse playback. And, they'll have TV
> viewing and PVR capabilities, including features such as time-
> shifting.
> ( http://elisa.fluendo.com/features/ )
>
> Sounds to me like Myth's days over.
>
> (I agree with you fully, Justin.)
>
> Mike

I wonder how long it takes for Apple to issue a cease and desist on
that navigation they stole from them. Google tried to do that a while
back. It stayed on google.com for about a day before they were
ordered to take it down - and they did so immediately.

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> Frankly, who cares? The idea of free software is to promote choice, not
> stifle it. Let them use what they want, I don't think it will
> significantly affect the number of mythtv users, nor the quality of the
> product we love.
>
>
Exactly! And if you are looking for distro that support MythTV out the
box today, there is MythDora and my personal favorite KnoppMyth.

Regards,

Cecil
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Erik Warner wrote:
> I hope you will join me in attempting to convince the Ubuntu Media
> Center team and Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu's founder,
> http://MarkShuttleworth.com) that MythTV is the obvious choice for the
> Ubuntu Media Center.

Why? There is already https://launchpad.net/mythbuntu, and ubuntu itself
has very stable and polished packages for myth. If there is another
project that uses Elisa that's just what it is: another project.

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Nick Rout wrote:
> Frankly, who cares? The idea of free software is to promote choice, not
> stifle it. Let them use what they want, I don't think it will
> significantly affect the number of mythtv users, nor the quality of the
> product we love.

Great post

Dave
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On Tuesday 15 May 2007 18:46:28 Erik Warner wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to let you know that Ubuntu is starting its "Ubuntu Media
> Center" initiative, and that they are apparently choosing Elisa
> instead of MythTV:
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMediaCenterTeam
>
> Given that MythTV is way more feature-rich, stable, and powerful,
> forgoing MythTV is a terrible decision on the part of Ubuntu and its
> parent company, Canonical. MythTV is _the gold standard_ of Free/Open
> Source media centers. Both MythTV and Ubuntu have great communities,
> and they could certainly benefit from a mutual relationship.
>
> I hope you will join me in attempting to convince the Ubuntu Media
> Center team and Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu's founder,
> http://MarkShuttleworth.com) that MythTV is the obvious choice for the
> Ubuntu Media Center.
>
> Thanks,
> Erik
>
> BTW: Our DRM-loving, anti-GPL, anti-Qt/KDE friends at Fluendo are the
> main culprits in this deal, as they are the ones pushing their own
> semi-proprietary product.

I'll stick with MythTV, thank you, but some food for thought:

There are multiple reasons Linux distros backed by US-based corporate entities
won't ship their own MythTV packages or support a MythTV distribution, almost
all of them involving codec patents here in the US. Fluendo appears to be
going about things in a manner which would allow Elisa to be shipped free of
patented codecs, but with the ability to "legally" acquire them from Fluendo
(of course, in my eyes, it'll be largely useless without them, I need mpeg2
support for pretty much all my recordings).

Anyhow, as a result, I think you could wind up seeing US distros actually able
to support/endorse Elisa, whereas that ain't gonna happen with MythTV, at
least not anytime soon.

--
Jarod Wilson
jarod@wilsonet.com
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On May 15, 2007, at 9:56 PM, Brian J. Murrell wrote:

> On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 00:38 -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>>
>> Sounds like someone needs to fix his MythTV installation.
>
> Sure. Tell me what's broken that everything works except that seeking
> just say, a single "ffwd" or "rew" can take many seconds to process.
> I'll pass along your fix to the Ubuntu packaging team.
>
> How about the "smearing" that non-mpeg2 and nuv files do when you seek
> in them? Do you think that is my "broken" installation?

I wonder if this is codec-related? I don't run into that problem. I
do, however, find that in many non-MPEG2 files mplayer cannot seek AT
ALL but MythTV can. I don't know why, but it's one reason I prefer
MythTV's internal player.

If you like mplayer better, though, you can always tell MythTV to use
that.

> How capable DirectFB is at it is actually quite a red-herring. It
> doesn't make it any less wrong to use something as heavy as X for what
> is relatively simple (in contrast to what X11 provides) video display
> requirements. It's like driving a thumbtack with a sledgehammer.

As I understand it, it's the "when all you have is a hammer,
everything starts to look like a nail" problem. The only environment
that drivers with good MPEG video acceleration is written for is X,
and video acceleration is essential for playing HDTV. (Last I looked
DirectFB was essentially non-accelerated; you can correct me if
that's changed.) The CPU just can't push pixels fast enough at those
kinds of resolutions. In some cases the bus bandwidth isn't even up
to it.

Arguing Myth should use DirectFB is a bit like arguing that games
should be written to run under MS-DOS because Windows is too heavy.
There's a grain of truth to it, but the hardware compatibility and
driver interfaces provided by the extra layers are useful enough to
make the point moot.
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