Timer Recordings and other questions about MVP

[lupus11]

Hello to all,

I bought a MVP recently, trying to ban the PC noise from my living room.
I have quite some experience with PVR and DVB, and searching for
MVP support software came to VOMP and this forum.

After testing MythTV,GBPVR, myHTPC I came back to vdr, because it
seems to be the most stable and best documented solution.

Soon I found the VOMP plugin to be the best "up to date" plugin for the
MVP. I looked around in the source codes compiled the plugin, made
some small (testing) adjustments.

The biggest point for me at the moment is the setting of record timers
using MVP and remote. This would cover 90% of my needs.
Is there already some schedules date when VOMP is going to support this ?

Then I have some more theoretical questions: From my point of view (before
looking the the source codes) MVP was only a MPEG2 to Screen translation
device. Now I found out, that the menus are in no way encoded MPEG2, but
are sent to the device in totally different manner (for the Hauppage original
it is obviously a modified VNC protocol).
My (maybe silly) idea is: Would't it be possible to have a plugin that works in a way
that all screen data is encoded MPEG2 first and then just sent to the MVP.
What I would intend to do is to create a "remote" screen of the actual vdr screen.
After all this is somehow the way it is done by the "original" vdr, using a ff-DVB card
which does the overlay of the menus.
Having nowadays cpus and libs like ffmpeg wouldn't it be possible to achieve
something like this ?

The "sexy" thing behind this idea is, that you could keep the software in the MVP
very very simple, it would never need to be changed. All plugins and extensions
of the vdr would be immediately available on MVP, without changing MVP server
or firmware.

I got my vdr experience only for the last two weeks, so I cannot estimate the
effort to provide such a solution.

So for the more experienced ones:
Is it just the amount of work or are there technical reasons (hard facts)
that would prevent such a plugin.

Anyway, thank you a lot for VOMP, please implement the timer feature soon.
I will keep active in this forum, maybe I can do some programming myself.

If I succeed installing the cross compiler (which I have not done yet) in which
way is it possible to debug the PPC code ?

Thank You
lupus

[Chris]

Hello, I am glad you like VDR the best... I never did get around to evaluating the others

I am working on timers now. So far I have the list of timers displayed, and viewing an individual timer. These things are only in the client CVS at the moment. Next I will support editing an existing timer, and finally adding a new one. As for when it will be done, I don't know. I don't get a lot of time for vomp at the moment so it's a bit at a time.

Your design for MPEG encoding menus on the server and returning everything as one stream to the MVP would be possible, and has been discussed here and over at mvpmc before. And yes, it would make the client stable/small/general and the general system development easier. But, the one major disadvantage with it, which is why nobody has tried it yet (as far as I know) is the round trip time from pressing a button on the remote to seeing the results on screen. In my opinion it is already slow enough as it is because of the time it takes to decode a remote button and give it to the software - sending that over a network and mpeg encoding a result and sending the graphics back would make it much slower.

I don't think anyone knows how much slower it would be really, so if you want to try it go ahead! It probably wouldn't take many changes to the existing vomp client code to do what you want in the client side, but then you would have to implement a fairly different server side.

As for debugging PPC code - I am unaware of anyone successfully doing real time debugging, but I have managed to compile a gdb to examine core dumps from vompclient. Doing that and having copious amounts of logging works for me.

[lupus11]

Thank you for your quick answers Chris.

Concerning the response time of a pure MPEG2 concecpt,
I think it would definitely be slower than VOMP
(doing everything directly in the box) but compared
to the original Hauppage software I hope there would
not be much difference. After all, menus have to
be encoded anyway, if it is done in a VNC like manner
or MPEG2 to me makes not much difference, as you do
not have to provide a "real" MPEG2 stream but you only
have to generate one GOP once and repeatedly sending it
(regenerating it with every change of the menu of course).

I am not thinking about alpha blending it to the video stream
atm, I think I might give it a try.
But as yours my problem is also availability of time.

Thank you
lupus

[Schnurps]

Hi lupus11,

your concept has one more big disadvantage: you can only use ONE MediaMVP. At the moment I have 4 MediaMVPs here running m    simultaneously, so that wouldn't be a solution for me.
I am not really sure, but I think that has also been done by Dominic Morris (before he made the mediamvp-plugin). He just called it "mvp"-plugin and used the mediamvp as a output-device. But I am not really sure - perhaps you should contact him.

Yours,
Schnurps

[lupus11]

Hello Schnurps,

thank you for your hints. I did not think about having multiple MVPs,
you are right. However atm I only have one, so for me it would be
sufficient. I had a look a Dominics mvp server before. He is not encoding
menus in MPEG2, he tried to emulate the originial Hauppauge software
with the modified VNC protocol. (at least that's what I read in the
corresponding pages on the net.)

Thank you anyway
lupus

[LithiW]

Hello,

this is possible a possibility for setting timers on MVP ??

It is a Perl-Script
http://www.vdrportal.de/board/thread.php?threadid=43297&sid=
Script: http://www.vdrportal.de/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=8365&sid=

It is in German but my English is to bad for translate this topic (and my knowledge of vdr-plugins too)

Perhaps it helps

LithiW

[Chris]

I am currently working on the timers support for vomp. Parts or all of timers support will be in the next dongle.