I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they are less concerned with the quality difference between the SD and HD stations than they are with how much slower their channel surfing is with the HD versions.
But the player has no codec problem with live tv. It plays it's own livetv stuff perfectly fine, so how does switching players in any way help that. When it comes to imported files (or if you want to transcode using an external utility to a format it isn't fully function with), I'll give you that point, but the thread started off talking about using another player instead of their own internal player, so how specifically thier own player fails for live tv I'm not sure. Perhaps the discussion got silently sidetracked onto something else.
With the transcoding stuff, I'm unclear. Are you trying to transcode it inside of or outside of myth? You said "I can't tell you how much trouble I've had just trying to transcode myth-recorded shows without using mythtranscode" so I took that to mean you were trying to use other (non-myth) tools to do the transcode and they were choking on the file format generated by myth. If that's not what you are saying, please clarify.
If you are talking about limited transcoding ability of myth's built in transcoders, I'll definitely agree with you there. The nice thing, however, is that you can let any program do the transcoding. If you look in the database, there is a variable called JobQueueTranscodeCommand that you can set to the path of whatever you want to handle the transcoding. For example, mine is set to:/usr/local/scripts/transcode %JOBID% %CHANID% %STARTTIME% %DIR% %FILE% "%TITLE%" "%SUBTITLE%" %TRANSPROFILE%
which calls a perl script I've written, passing it all of the relevant info. I have it do some housekeeping, call nuvexport to do the transcode, and then do a little more followup housekeeping. If mythtranscode can't do what you want but you can find an external utility that can, this is your route.
OK, now you are back to talking about codec issues, even though your last post basically said you weren't talking about codec issues, but live TV.:-)
Anyway, again, what do you want them to do? They use ffmpeg for their codec support, so that important stuff has already been moved out. If you think they should use something other than ffmpeg, thats fine, but I suspect there'd be tradeoffs there as well (unless you know the perfect library that solves every problem).
Other stuff like cutlists...I'm not familiar enough with various media formats to know, but how feasible is that? Right now, myth uses a frame precise seeking method (if you are going to cut out commercials and then transcode it, you want that precision). Is that feasible to do without building the seek table that myth requires? Perhaps...I don't know enough to say. How I/O intensive is such seeking without the seek table? Intensive enough to make it difficult with a distributed system over a network? Perhaps that's not the issue either, but did you think about that?
My point is that there are a lot of aspects to consider before just saying "they're doing it wrong". It's easy to criticize a piece of software, but it's another to know all of the tradeoffs that had to go into play in making each decision.
By the way, regarding your troubles transcoding myth's recorded shows, that highly depends on your hardware. My PVR-350 outputs MPEG-2 data and myth just dumps it to a mpg file. My HDHomeRun does what most HD capture cards do....outputs whatever raw data (usually MPEG-4) was transmitted over cable or broadcast and just dumps that to an mpg file, too. The PVR-1212 gives myth h.264 data which gets dumped to a file. At least with this sort of hardware, myth has little say in what's happening. If you've got an analog, non hardware assisted capture card, then perhaps you've got a point, but I wouldn't know because I've never bothered with one.
At the same time, pick anyone who knows anything about Guitar Hero and Rock Band and see what they know about anything at all similar produced by Konami. With a small company, it would be excusable that they are working in a niche market, but someone like Konami has the resources and experience to make something like this popular. If they couldn't manage to do what Harmonix has managed to do (twice, none the less), then what good is it doing the public having Konami sit on these ideas?
Now you've confused me, because the item you chose to use as your example of why they should let someone else take care of the player was codec support, but if you are talking about LiveTV then where does the codec issue come into play there?
If codecs aren't your problem, then please explain what other issues make it so vital they they use something external as their player.
Wow, that's the second time you've taken my post and turned it into something it wasn't.
I made no such claim. I only claimed that your suggestion that "all they had to do was put a sticker on it" was utterly ridiculous and absolutely devoid of anything having to do with reality.
I wouldn't bother trying to discuss actual figures or anything like that with someone who can't even grasp the fact that operating costs exist (or at least, since you seem very interested in implying things, that is what was implied by your post). Even now, you resort to that same sort of logic with statements like "their only justification for a 300% mark-up is greed".
Complain all you like if it makes you feel better. However, if you read carefully, you will noticed that not once did I attack or defend anything about their business model or pricing. All I've done was point out that you are complaining from a stance so extreme that you don't even acknowledge the possibility that their markup is anything but 100% profit.
If you can twist my neutral comments that far one way or the other, I'd hate to see what you'd do with my words if I actually took a side on the issue.
Huh? What the hell does that have to do with your claim of "all they had to do was put a sticker on it" while completely dismissing anything that went into it? Did I say anything in favor of or against them selling used games, or anything about their business model? No. I was simply commenting on your (not uncommon) misconception about what expenses are involved in running a business. The basic idea of my post could just as easily been applied to someone saying Best Buy rips you off by charging $20 for a DVD when the raw materials to make each DVD only cost a penny each.
How in the world you turned what I said into what you replied with, I haven't the slightest idea.
I do think it is a RIPOFF that Gamestop gives me $12 for a used game, turns around and sells it for $40, and all they had to do was put a sticker on it.
Yep. The rent is free, as are the employees, the advertising, the storage of games, the risk it won't sell, the insurance in case the game gets stolen, the computer that rings up the sale, the accountant that does taxes, the taxes they pay on that income, end even the sticker that they put on the used game. Yep, that's all free. All they have to do is put a sticker on it.
Actually, matroska files work perfectly fine on my 0.21 installation. I don't know anything about dealing with multiple audio tracks in one file (never had a file like that)
As has been pointed out, you can use an external player. The reasons why the internal player exist are numerous. Using an external player, you can only so do much in the way of integration. Themeing, automatical commercial skip, displaying OSD popups on screen related to other (non video) events, picture in picture, live TV while looking at the program guide, video preview thumbnails embedded in the recording list screen, etc.
Rewriting and existing player to handle everything myth needs would be a major task. Basically, all you'd be using it for would be its video decoding abilities. MythTV has already farmed that out. I believe they use ffmpeg to handle this. However, for certain compatibility issues I don't recall, they don't use an external copy of ffmpeg. They've copied a snapshot of ffmpeg directly into the myth tree. That means you can't just install the latest copy of ffmpeg and upgrade mythtv (though they do update it in the mythtv tree from time to time)
1) I'm not sure it's the MythTV developer's fault that QT3 doesn't support all these extra key commands.
2) Another big part of this new update is the switch to QT4 (4.3, I think).
3) In my experience, IR devices that get recognized as HID devices are quite rare. Almost everything I've used require lirc drivers.
4) Yes, configuring myth to map things nicely does take a bit of work, but I'm not sure what the ideal solution is. Myth will support everything from a 6 or 7 button remote to a full keyboard. I'm not sure you you setup defaults that can nicely accommodate everything in that spectrum. Yes, they could include several default configurations and let you switch between them, but honestly stuff like that is probably better suited to being prepared by the distribution. If' you are installing myth from CVS, chances are you are going to be more that happy (probably even insistant) with remapping everything yourself.
5) I beleive mouse (and thus touchscreen) support are supposed to be an addition to the new MythUI.
About the remote control, that (like the installer) has nothing to do with the myth team. For remotes, you are looking for lirc support (the linux standard system for IR input). Once lirc supports it, myth will work with it just fine.
As for the video, I don't know about that particular card, but I know a lot of the All in Wonder cards have notoriously poor driver support under linux. If yours is one of those, I don't know how you expect a miracle when ATI would provide neither an adequate driver nor the necessary specs for an open source version to be created.
First off, if your system can't run at full load without being unstable, then you have a hardware issue that needs to be looked at.
With regard to animations, they do have a valid purpose as far as usability. Often in programs, when you click a button and something in the UI changes, you can't tell exactly what it was that changed. You can see that something switched, but you aren't really sure what. With animations, you see the change before it has actually occurred, and your attention is focusing directly on it while it is occurring. When the change is complete, you know exactly what it was that changed.
Actually, this isn't a minor update. It is a significant rewrite of the user interface that has been in the works for years (the ticket for this new UI was opened in June 2005). However, this isn't something that is going to be so significant to the end user directly. A lot of what you'll see come out of this will be subtle. The bigger benefit of this is for developers. Both code developers and theme developers. I have a bit of experience doing both for MythTv, and from what I've seen this is going to be a cool change. It's not news for TV watcher, but I think it is for nerds (or at least some of us).
Huh? What installer? This is MythTV. It has no installer (other than a makefile). If you are thinking of Mythbuntu, Mythdora, Knoppmyth, or something like that, the guys on the MythTV team have little or nothing to do with any of that.
But she is old and probably grew old before internet and probably never traveled much... So there is some reason why she believed everything she was told.
Yes, if only we could get rid of that internet we wouldn't have to worry about con men anymore.
Research also shows Slashdot readers read the articles less than 100% of the time:
FTA:
All told, Microsoft correctly predicted eight out of October's 20 vulnerabilities' exploitability, an accuracy rate of 40%.
and in the previous paragraph:
Of the nine October vulnerabilities marked "Consistent exploit code likely," four did, in fact, end up with exploit code available, said Reavey, for an accuracy rate of 44%.
Wow, and I didn't even have to read the article to respond to you. Simply clicking on the link and spending 2 seconds telling the browser to search for "40%" and then reading one single sentence was enough. But I know, that's a lot to ask.
Sure, if you have unlimited resources and can devote an infinite number of people to fixing everything, that would be great. However, if you have finite resources available and have to devote them to fixing up certain areas, how do you know where to devote your attention? If you can come up with a methodology for predicting such a thing, put it to the test, and get decent accuracy in your predictions, then wouldn't that be useful for confirming for you how you should devote your limited resources?
There is nothing unique in what they are doing. I mean, look at the auto industry, for example. They don't just randomly assign engineers to try and make random things safer. They do studies, try to figure out what are the most dangerous aspects of a vehicle, and then assign engineers to work on those specific things.
Fortunately for the auto industry, it's a little easier to do your predictions pre-release, since the "attack vectors" are more limited and well known (there are typically only so many ways you can get into an accident, so it's easier to model a majority of those cases). This allows them to be proactive in fixing flaws. Unfortunately, the attacks vectors in software are a bit more numerous, and you often have to take a more reactive approach. What Microsoft is doing here is trying to model things to see how reasonable it would be to devote resources in certain ways to be proactive.
Intent is a difference between manslaughter and murder, but in both cases, you are GUILTY!!!! That means you carry the responsibility and the blame. So, even if your example did have anything to do with what "Free the Cowards" was saying, I'm not sure what your point was.
However, the reason it was a straw man was because you were talking about a person committing a crime and discussing whether or not they did it intentionally or accidentally. "Free the Cowards" was talking about someone intentionally allowing herself to be victimized. If you can't see that those are 2 completely different things, or if you can't see how that is exactly what the term straw man refers to, then it is you who "fail. hard"
PS. I'm sick of that stupid "fail" meme. Die already.
Nice straw man you got there. How many times was the guy in #1 warned that he was falling asleep while heading right towards the school bus (and that if he did so he'd surely kill some of them) before deciding "no, I'm just gonna fall asleep...the kids will be fine"
Yet, somehow she thinks that sharing HER story with the world will convince other people? If only someone had shared their story with her, she could have avoided this terrible mess, so she's going to make sure it doesn't happen to others? Please. Even in acknowledging her stupidity, she shows no sense.
You can already deal with your electric bill by using hibernate or suspend-to-ram. The only thing this adds is the ability to do that hibernate or suspend-to-ram while ALSO getting a clean boot. Under linux, getting the clean boot tends not to be such an important issue, so a regular suspend-to-ram or hibernate should work just fine most of the time.
Linux basically Just boots in 5 seconds. In a plain normal fashion. Everytime you push the button, no matter what, the system is up in 5 seconds
Maybe on a clean install with nothing interesting at all running, but for a more useful setup, I find my core2 duo takes considerably longer than that.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they are less concerned with the quality difference between the SD and HD stations than they are with how much slower their channel surfing is with the HD versions.
I don't use 5.1, just Dolby Pro-logic....yep, a 1080p TV matched with a stereo using 1980's audio technology :) So, sorry....no specific advice there.
However, is it safe to assume that you've asked such a question on the mythtv users mailing list (and if it was a long time ago, have you asked again recently). Seems like a problem somebody would have solved at some point. Here's a thread that might be relevant:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/253940?search_string=transcode%20AC3%205.1;#253940
But the player has no codec problem with live tv. It plays it's own livetv stuff perfectly fine, so how does switching players in any way help that. When it comes to imported files (or if you want to transcode using an external utility to a format it isn't fully function with), I'll give you that point, but the thread started off talking about using another player instead of their own internal player, so how specifically thier own player fails for live tv I'm not sure. Perhaps the discussion got silently sidetracked onto something else.
With the transcoding stuff, I'm unclear. Are you trying to transcode it inside of or outside of myth? You said "I can't tell you how much trouble I've had just trying to transcode myth-recorded shows without using mythtranscode" so I took that to mean you were trying to use other (non-myth) tools to do the transcode and they were choking on the file format generated by myth. If that's not what you are saying, please clarify.
If you are talking about limited transcoding ability of myth's built in transcoders, I'll definitely agree with you there. The nice thing, however, is that you can let any program do the transcoding. If you look in the database, there is a variable called JobQueueTranscodeCommand that you can set to the path of whatever you want to handle the transcoding. For example, mine is set to: /usr/local/scripts/transcode %JOBID% %CHANID% %STARTTIME% %DIR% %FILE% "%TITLE%" "%SUBTITLE%" %TRANSPROFILE%
which calls a perl script I've written, passing it all of the relevant info. I have it do some housekeeping, call nuvexport to do the transcode, and then do a little more followup housekeeping. If mythtranscode can't do what you want but you can find an external utility that can, this is your route.
OK, now you are back to talking about codec issues, even though your last post basically said you weren't talking about codec issues, but live TV. :-)
Anyway, again, what do you want them to do? They use ffmpeg for their codec support, so that important stuff has already been moved out. If you think they should use something other than ffmpeg, thats fine, but I suspect there'd be tradeoffs there as well (unless you know the perfect library that solves every problem).
Other stuff like cutlists...I'm not familiar enough with various media formats to know, but how feasible is that? Right now, myth uses a frame precise seeking method (if you are going to cut out commercials and then transcode it, you want that precision). Is that feasible to do without building the seek table that myth requires? Perhaps...I don't know enough to say. How I/O intensive is such seeking without the seek table? Intensive enough to make it difficult with a distributed system over a network? Perhaps that's not the issue either, but did you think about that?
My point is that there are a lot of aspects to consider before just saying "they're doing it wrong". It's easy to criticize a piece of software, but it's another to know all of the tradeoffs that had to go into play in making each decision.
By the way, regarding your troubles transcoding myth's recorded shows, that highly depends on your hardware. My PVR-350 outputs MPEG-2 data and myth just dumps it to a mpg file. My HDHomeRun does what most HD capture cards do....outputs whatever raw data (usually MPEG-4) was transmitted over cable or broadcast and just dumps that to an mpg file, too. The PVR-1212 gives myth h.264 data which gets dumped to a file. At least with this sort of hardware, myth has little say in what's happening. If you've got an analog, non hardware assisted capture card, then perhaps you've got a point, but I wouldn't know because I've never bothered with one.
At the same time, pick anyone who knows anything about Guitar Hero and Rock Band and see what they know about anything at all similar produced by Konami. With a small company, it would be excusable that they are working in a niche market, but someone like Konami has the resources and experience to make something like this popular. If they couldn't manage to do what Harmonix has managed to do (twice, none the less), then what good is it doing the public having Konami sit on these ideas?
Now you've confused me, because the item you chose to use as your example of why they should let someone else take care of the player was codec support, but if you are talking about LiveTV then where does the codec issue come into play there?
If codecs aren't your problem, then please explain what other issues make it so vital they they use something external as their player.
Wow, that's the second time you've taken my post and turned it into something it wasn't.
I made no such claim. I only claimed that your suggestion that "all they had to do was put a sticker on it" was utterly ridiculous and absolutely devoid of anything having to do with reality.
I wouldn't bother trying to discuss actual figures or anything like that with someone who can't even grasp the fact that operating costs exist (or at least, since you seem very interested in implying things, that is what was implied by your post). Even now, you resort to that same sort of logic with statements like "their only justification for a 300% mark-up is greed".
Complain all you like if it makes you feel better. However, if you read carefully, you will noticed that not once did I attack or defend anything about their business model or pricing. All I've done was point out that you are complaining from a stance so extreme that you don't even acknowledge the possibility that their markup is anything but 100% profit.
If you can twist my neutral comments that far one way or the other, I'd hate to see what you'd do with my words if I actually took a side on the issue.
Huh? What the hell does that have to do with your claim of "all they had to do was put a sticker on it" while completely dismissing anything that went into it? Did I say anything in favor of or against them selling used games, or anything about their business model? No. I was simply commenting on your (not uncommon) misconception about what expenses are involved in running a business. The basic idea of my post could just as easily been applied to someone saying Best Buy rips you off by charging $20 for a DVD when the raw materials to make each DVD only cost a penny each.
How in the world you turned what I said into what you replied with, I haven't the slightest idea.
Yep. The rent is free, as are the employees, the advertising, the storage of games, the risk it won't sell, the insurance in case the game gets stolen, the computer that rings up the sale, the accountant that does taxes, the taxes they pay on that income, end even the sticker that they put on the used game. Yep, that's all free. All they have to do is put a sticker on it.
Actually, matroska files work perfectly fine on my 0.21 installation. I don't know anything about dealing with multiple audio tracks in one file (never had a file like that)
As has been pointed out, you can use an external player. The reasons why the internal player exist are numerous. Using an external player, you can only so do much in the way of integration. Themeing, automatical commercial skip, displaying OSD popups on screen related to other (non video) events, picture in picture, live TV while looking at the program guide, video preview thumbnails embedded in the recording list screen, etc.
Rewriting and existing player to handle everything myth needs would be a major task. Basically, all you'd be using it for would be its video decoding abilities. MythTV has already farmed that out. I believe they use ffmpeg to handle this. However, for certain compatibility issues I don't recall, they don't use an external copy of ffmpeg. They've copied a snapshot of ffmpeg directly into the myth tree. That means you can't just install the latest copy of ffmpeg and upgrade mythtv (though they do update it in the mythtv tree from time to time)
1) I'm not sure it's the MythTV developer's fault that QT3 doesn't support all these extra key commands.
2) Another big part of this new update is the switch to QT4 (4.3, I think).
3) In my experience, IR devices that get recognized as HID devices are quite rare. Almost everything I've used require lirc drivers.
4) Yes, configuring myth to map things nicely does take a bit of work, but I'm not sure what the ideal solution is. Myth will support everything from a 6 or 7 button remote to a full keyboard. I'm not sure you you setup defaults that can nicely accommodate everything in that spectrum. Yes, they could include several default configurations and let you switch between them, but honestly stuff like that is probably better suited to being prepared by the distribution. If' you are installing myth from CVS, chances are you are going to be more that happy (probably even insistant) with remapping everything yourself.
5) I beleive mouse (and thus touchscreen) support are supposed to be an addition to the new MythUI.
About the remote control, that (like the installer) has nothing to do with the myth team. For remotes, you are looking for lirc support (the linux standard system for IR input). Once lirc supports it, myth will work with it just fine.
As for the video, I don't know about that particular card, but I know a lot of the All in Wonder cards have notoriously poor driver support under linux. If yours is one of those, I don't know how you expect a miracle when ATI would provide neither an adequate driver nor the necessary specs for an open source version to be created.
First off, if your system can't run at full load without being unstable, then you have a hardware issue that needs to be looked at.
With regard to animations, they do have a valid purpose as far as usability. Often in programs, when you click a button and something in the UI changes, you can't tell exactly what it was that changed. You can see that something switched, but you aren't really sure what. With animations, you see the change before it has actually occurred, and your attention is focusing directly on it while it is occurring. When the change is complete, you know exactly what it was that changed.
Actually, this isn't a minor update. It is a significant rewrite of the user interface that has been in the works for years (the ticket for this new UI was opened in June 2005). However, this isn't something that is going to be so significant to the end user directly. A lot of what you'll see come out of this will be subtle. The bigger benefit of this is for developers. Both code developers and theme developers. I have a bit of experience doing both for MythTv, and from what I've seen this is going to be a cool change. It's not news for TV watcher, but I think it is for nerds (or at least some of us).
Huh? What installer? This is MythTV. It has no installer (other than a makefile). If you are thinking of Mythbuntu, Mythdora, Knoppmyth, or something like that, the guys on the MythTV team have little or nothing to do with any of that.
Yes, if only we could get rid of that internet we wouldn't have to worry about con men anymore.
Research also shows Slashdot readers read the articles less than 100% of the time:
FTA:
and in the previous paragraph:
Wow, and I didn't even have to read the article to respond to you. Simply clicking on the link and spending 2 seconds telling the browser to search for "40%" and then reading one single sentence was enough. But I know, that's a lot to ask.
Sure, if you have unlimited resources and can devote an infinite number of people to fixing everything, that would be great. However, if you have finite resources available and have to devote them to fixing up certain areas, how do you know where to devote your attention? If you can come up with a methodology for predicting such a thing, put it to the test, and get decent accuracy in your predictions, then wouldn't that be useful for confirming for you how you should devote your limited resources?
There is nothing unique in what they are doing. I mean, look at the auto industry, for example. They don't just randomly assign engineers to try and make random things safer. They do studies, try to figure out what are the most dangerous aspects of a vehicle, and then assign engineers to work on those specific things.
Fortunately for the auto industry, it's a little easier to do your predictions pre-release, since the "attack vectors" are more limited and well known (there are typically only so many ways you can get into an accident, so it's easier to model a majority of those cases). This allows them to be proactive in fixing flaws. Unfortunately, the attacks vectors in software are a bit more numerous, and you often have to take a more reactive approach. What Microsoft is doing here is trying to model things to see how reasonable it would be to devote resources in certain ways to be proactive.
So again, in what way is this bad?
Intent is a difference between manslaughter and murder, but in both cases, you are GUILTY!!!! That means you carry the responsibility and the blame. So, even if your example did have anything to do with what "Free the Cowards" was saying, I'm not sure what your point was.
However, the reason it was a straw man was because you were talking about a person committing a crime and discussing whether or not they did it intentionally or accidentally. "Free the Cowards" was talking about someone intentionally allowing herself to be victimized. If you can't see that those are 2 completely different things, or if you can't see how that is exactly what the term straw man refers to, then it is you who "fail. hard"
PS. I'm sick of that stupid "fail" meme. Die already.
Nice straw man you got there. How many times was the guy in #1 warned that he was falling asleep while heading right towards the school bus (and that if he did so he'd surely kill some of them) before deciding "no, I'm just gonna fall asleep...the kids will be fine"
13 o'clock? Is this going to be on BBC? Which one? I'll set my DVR to record it.
Yet, somehow she thinks that sharing HER story with the world will convince other people? If only someone had shared their story with her, she could have avoided this terrible mess, so she's going to make sure it doesn't happen to others? Please. Even in acknowledging her stupidity, she shows no sense.
You can already deal with your electric bill by using hibernate or suspend-to-ram. The only thing this adds is the ability to do that hibernate or suspend-to-ram while ALSO getting a clean boot. Under linux, getting the clean boot tends not to be such an important issue, so a regular suspend-to-ram or hibernate should work just fine most of the time.
Maybe on a clean install with nothing interesting at all running, but for a more useful setup, I find my core2 duo takes considerably longer than that.