Re: gnome-dvb-daemon vs boxstard

[Tony Houghton <h realh co uk>]

[Resent because I accidentally sent it privately the first time]

On Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:33:28 +0200
Sebastian Pölsterl <sebp k-d-w org> wrote:

> > * Freesat's EPG (EIT schedule) is broadcast on non-standard PIDs
> > and the text is Huffman-encoded.
> >
> > * Does gdd support subtitles?
>
> All the parsing and decoding is not carried out directly in gdd, but 
> gstreamer. Therefore, you'd have to patch gstreamer elements.
> Regarding subtitle support, somebody started working on it [2], but
> it's not ported to gstreamer, yet.

Do you just mean the subtitles are/would be handled by the gstreamer
player, or also the EPG and other SI?

> Absolutely, your suggestions all sound reasonable to me. I'd be happy
> to accept patches.

OK, but don't expect anything very soon, because I guess I need to learn
vala and gstreamer first (ultimately boxstar was going to need its own
player and basing it on gstreamer was looking sensible anyway). Luckily
I've already learnt to use GObject and was using it to some extent in
boxstard, as well as sqlite3, so both projects already have quite a bit
in common.

> If you have further questions please don't hesitate to ask.

Sorry, I've got rather more than you may have bargained for.

You say recordings aren't streamed, but I don't mind that because I can
access them via NFS or samba. What format are they in (TS, PES etc)?

Does it handle HD? I've been able to save parts of TS streams from tests
of boxstard's code. MPlayer can play back the SD MPEG2 OK, but it
doesn't recognise recordings of BBC HD (from Freesat) properly. It says
it thinks it's found an MPEG 2 video stream, but I'm pretty sure it's
supposed to be H264 so I suspect it's making a false assumption based on
the TS wrapper.

I overlooked another important point. I currently use vdr and nearly
always set my timers from another PC with vdradmin's web interface (and
even managed to use it from my mobile phone when I forgot to set a timer
before going out) to save interrupting whatever the family are watching
on the TV. So if gdd can't be accessed remotely it's going to need
something like an HTTP proxy. I'd planned to use HTTP exclusively in
boxstard.

Does it support hotplugging of USB DVB devices? I would have thought
that's what it uses gudev for, but why the UI rather than the daemon?

-- 
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk