Hi All,
As I have worked on some EPG/PVR type UI's before I am willing to
revisit and create the designs for the UI that will fit in with Moovida.
Here at Fluendo though, we do not take on any job without a good well
written initial specification of the 'idea' which details areas to
look at and possible solutions for both the back-end code (dev work)
and front end (how the user will use it).
If you guys are serious and want to get together on it to make it
happen, then please put together a specification with the following:
1. A Good general overview of the 'idea'
This should chart what it is you are looking to do, what the overall
concept is about (laymens language) without going into specific detail.
2. UX (User Experience) Overview
This is very important and must come first before any development
happens.
Here you need to list all the features that you think the user should
be able to access.
Briefly describe how the user should use all those features and if
possible consider how you think they should each one in turn.
This of course is subject to change and is considered to be a bit of
brainstorming but it starts to formulate the idea and it focuses you
on the user and not the geeky back end 1's and 0's.
3. UI Hierarchy
This is a loose first draft at the UI hierarchy and is useful for a
discussion point when considering usability. It is very very important
in Moovida to have everything within 3 clicks before something can play.
We strive to make sure that everything is quick to use and you aren't
going through multiple screens before something plays back or you can
do something. (yes folder browsing being an acception :p).
A simple way to do the hierarchy is like the one I did for the Music
section in Moovida... I typed it out like this:
MUSIC
......Library
......Search
............Keyboard + Results
.......................Media Results
......Artists
...........List of
....................Albums
......Albums
......Tracks
......Genres
...........List of
.....................Albums
......Music Videos
......Playlists
............List of
.....................Tracks
So I loosely in a crude visual way describe the hierarchal structure
there and it gives you a sense of what you will see onscreen. Note,
something like 'Library' goes straight to the media so I dont define it.
4. Development Overview
This is about detailing what should be done and what you think is
needed for 'the backend'. Known problems in relation to your goals as
well as possible ways to tackle them as well as put the code together.
5. A look at other similar projects and resources
Always good to point to all the relevent sources and information you
can find in this area.
Link to Opensource projects or code you are going to use.
Link to other similar projects (e.g. Media Portal have TV + EPG as
well...might be useful to see from a UX perspective)
Link to other UI's that you find interesting or useful (video is also
good as well... for example, a nice video of the MythTV EPG).
So, for all the Myth TV guys, if you want to get together and do this,
if you can organise a specification with the detail needed. The next
step is discussing the UX experience and at that point I can help out
and we can take it from there. Then come some 'mockups' and
development work.
There you go :)
David
David McLeod
Senior Designer & UI Lead
Fluendo S.A.
World Trade Center Edificio Norte Pl.2
08039 BARCELONA SPAIN
Tel: +34 936 002 323
Skype: Daiode
Jabber/GMail: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
On 30 Jun 2009, at 01:37, Kevin Fox wrote:
I worked on it a bit a while ago using libgmyth and the myth gstreamer
plugin. It was close to working, but I couldn't easily get the
metadata
into Elisa at the time, and between lack of time and Elisa getting
several major over halls, the project never went anywhere. It still
would be a good thing todo IMHO.
On Mon, 2009-06-29 at 15:21 -0700, Keith Cirkel wrote:
I'm getting rather tired of the outdated feel of mythfrontend. When I
downloaded moovida it was exactly what I wanted in a media centre
frontend, it just lacked the tv bit!
I'd like to propose development of a plugin for moovida to provide
support for the mythtv-backend service. I am pretty familiar with
mythbackend, but I am quite new to python (dabbled a bit in it,
mostly
with Django). I am pretty happy to just get stuck in though, and try
and get a (somewhat) working plugin asap, problem being I am out of
my
depth when it comes to the code.
Here is as much as I know about this, in my attempt to get this
project kickstarted as fast as possible:
For the uninitiated, the mythtv-backend is a service that has the
hardware implimentations for tuners, as well as a database backend to
store tv listings. The backend actually does all the heavy lifting -
so recording shows, managing schedules, managing tuners, expiration
of
recordings, infact pretty much everything you can think of. All the
frontend does is spit out the video output, and schedule hud.
The service runs on a custom protocol, running on port 6543, so one
is
able to setup a mythtv backend service running on one machine, and a
mythtv frontend service running on a separate machine. The backend
also handles backends, so you could have an arbitrary amount of
backends in a internetworked configuration of backends which can be
accessed from multiple frontends. In summary, its a many to many kind
of thing.
The protocol basically picks up on a connection from the port,
requiring a MYTH_PROTO_VERSION response, which tells the backend
which
version of the protocol you're using. When this handshake is done you
can run a huge list of commands. The caveat is that the protocol
version you're running must match the backends protocol version.
For a more in depth analysis of the protocol, you can see here:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Using_the_Myth_protocol
For a list of commands with details on each one, head over here:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Myth_Protocol_Command_List
There is an implimentation which seems to take out alot of the hard
work from using the mythtv protocol here:
http://gmyth.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. This was
linked
from the originating forum post.
To flag up some future problems, you can read here:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Using_the_Myth_protocol#Getting_Guide_Data
which details one quirk with getting TV Guide data, where the
frontend
will simply query the *sql database direct; rather than the backend.
This unfortunately would add a whole layer of crap into the plugin,
as
while you can pull the authentication details from the backend, it
means extra db code needs to be added for such neccessary functions.
...so... anyone interested in getting this going?
----
Keith Cirkel
