The future of MythTV

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jem90
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by jem90 »

Came to the forum to try and scope out an hardware upgrade, and spotted this thread. Thought it might be an idea to register and chime in!

I've been using mythtv since about 2011, built a combined BE/FE that also functions as a NAS on the home network and still running the same hardware, although upgraded from Fedora 15 through to 37 during that time. I usually upgrade once a year, and upgrade snags have definitely reduced over the years and since about Myth 29 are now normally just Fedora issues. It helps I'm a developer that works with DVB tuner cards, iptv streaming and video playback. I should probably pitch in to myth development but at the end of the work day I'm pretty much done :(

Living in the UK I use it for OTA DVB-T2 recording, initially with a USB tuner but since swapped to a dual PCIe tuner. I don't use it nearly as much as I did, mainly because we moved to a house with patchy terrestrial reception and just don't watch TV enough these days to bother getting a dish installed. Most of our viewing is Youtube or Prime and the occasional once a month TV program we still want to record we just end up using the cable box we have bundled with the internet.

I do still use the frontend for video playback and music. I'm sure Kodi is probably better for this but I've never got on with the interface! I'd echo the comments about mythmusic being geared more to playlists rather than spontaneous listening. For the latter I tend to grab my phone and BT it to the TV or just search for the song on Youtube! Or just grab the CD. I'd like music playback to be "scroll though albums", "pick a song or play entire album". So only a couple of clicks to either play an album or a song.

It has been a huge part of my media watching over the last decade and would be sad to see it go, but imo the future of OTA broadcasts is limited. At a recent trade show I had a chat with one of the guys at the DVB forum explaining DVB-I which seems to be the way broadcast is going in the future so wouldn't be too surprised if OTA goes in the next decade or so. I guess in this world Myth could live on, but it will need to adapt to this. Question at the moment is which way LiveTV is going, HLS/DASH or udp-mpeg2 ts. The latter is much better suited at scale, especially with multicast.
CoolDreamZ
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by CoolDreamZ »

I’ve been using mythTV since 2007 (15.5 years!) on linux. I use it solely for recording/playback of OTA programs. Initially DVB-T (Freeview) and now DVB-S/2 (Freesat).
  • My backend system is headless and runs in a virtual machine on Proxmox with pci passthrough for the tuners
  • I use the Kodi mythTV plugin on a Raspberry Pi as my frontend for playback and liveTV (not for managing recordings)
  • I manage recordings using mythweb
  • I have noVNC installed on the backend so that I can access mythfrontend and mythtv-setup via any browser on the LAN
  • I only use the frontend to perform functions that are not available in mythweb (e.g. bulk deletes and moving items between recording groups)
  • Whenever a program is recorded to my ‘Films’ recording group an automated scipt creates a symbolic link to it with a ‘friendly’ name so that I can use Plex to browse/play them. I am considering doing a similar thing for tv shows.
  • I am considering moving from Plex to Jellyfin
I think mythbackend provides the best open source PVR functions available anywhere. Here are some suggestions for the future (in no particular order):
  • A modernized web frontend to:
    • setup recordings from the EPG
    • manage recording rules
    • browse/organize recordings
    • manage metadata (providers, fixing matches)
    • manage channels (scanning, editing)
    • manage storage (storage groups, moving recordings between storage groups, monitoring disk usage/health etc)
    • backup/restore/manage the database
    • other backend settings
    • play recordings/liveTV (although this is currently handled very well by the Kodi plugin)
  • Support for offline archive storage (to save power) which can be woken on demand to play/delete a recording
  • Channel management improvements:
    • option to re-tune existing channels only
    • alert user to channels that have moved multiplex or gone away, the only way I can see this at the moment is either through a failed recording or missing EPG data
    • automatic re-tuning of moved/failed channels
    • preserve user provided channel numbers when re-tuning (I currently use mythupchuk.pl for this)
  • EIT guide data seems to be reducing in quality for some channels, particularly the inconsistent/incorrect use of program IDs by the broadcasters:
    • Name/Subtitle only recording rules (i.e. no programid matching)
    • If possible, an option to prefer either the sign language version or unsigned version of programs
Tighter integration with metadata providers (say TMDB) to provide richer program listings and recording management. Some use cases are:
  • Provide artwork, descriptions, actors, directors, and other metadata to the program guide and recording rules/management to enable:
    • Listing recorded/missing episodes for TV series
    • Recording anything starring particular actors
    • Recording anything directed by a particular Director
  • Re-recording rules:
    • A particular program if re-broadcast in HD
    • A particular series if re-broadcast in HD
    • A particular series if re-broadcast on a commercial free channel
  • Recording de-duplication
  • Enhanced searches and filtered views on EPG and recordings
Some of the above suggestions could also be realised by integration with other media management solutions such as Jellyfin & Kodi. This would have the benefit of reducing the surface area of mythtv at the cost of less control over the user experience.

On the development side:


1. Consider using OpenAPI rather than WSDL for the services API. I am programming in Go/Dart and the only way I can find to get automatically generated wsdl bindings for those languages is to pay for them. OpenAPI appears to be able to generate these without requiring payment (although I haven’t tried it yet) https://github.com/OpenAPITools/openapi-generator
2. Some mechanism for users to vote on enhancements to influence priorities?
legooolas
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by legooolas »

Found this thread when searching for if it's possible to use a Raspberry Pi Zero with a DVB-T2 hat as an additional tuner over USB -- which I think in theory should be possible with USB gadget mode, but there's not currently a USB gadget g_dvb driver to expose that functionality over USB :)

I've been using MythTV for I don't know how many years, but at least 15 (oldest recordings on my current box are from 2011), almost exclusively with DVB-T hardware for UK OTA Freeview broadcasts. Used to use a dual-tuner PCI card which supported the pre-DVB-T2 standard "HD" test broadcasts as well as DVB-T, but then moved on to DVB-T2 USB sticks when they were available. Have just had another USB tuner fail so was looking for options (hence the Pi+DVB-T2 hat searching above).

I only use Myth for OTA recordings and downloaded video, and don't have streaming subscriptions, and only use this on a TV with a remote control (one of the cheaper Harmony ones - but they are also end-of-life now...) but I can see why more and more people are moving to streaming. I use the SchedulesDirect service as the OTA EIT data wasn't great, but since it's now only providing 7 days of data and getting it to join up with which channels are used when there are changes in naming/lineup is a bit of a pain, so I'm considering just switching to EIT data only. I use mythfrontend (and backend, obvs), and mythweb for the scheduling and upcoming recordings etc.

I basically don't watch live TV at all but get Myth to record it and remove the adverts using "Commercial detection with silences" mythtv wiki page (can't link to this yet!) which works perfectly 99% of the time. I very occasionally use a laptop or desktop PC to watch things from myth on a second screen whilst doing other stuff, but most of the time it's used on a dedicated front-end on a TV.

From my very narrow use-case point of view (which matches with what Myth has always done well) the main things I'd like to see improved are:

* Videos and recordings being separate and having completely different interfaces is odd, and I'd like them to be merged somehow
* Making it easier to pull videos from other sources (e.g. iplayer via get-iplayer, YouTube via yt-dlp, and so on). I tend to keep things to watch multiple times (e.g. cartoons for the kids) and don't like streaming them every time and relying on online services being available
* Ideally I'd like to be able to have arbitrary tagging on recordings, and to use those tags for filtering and so on -- there are a few things like the recording groups which can be used but it would be nice to be able to mark things as watched by one person but not another using tags, say
* Generally make the setup simpler -- although the Myth Control Panel software pointed to might actually do a lot of that, I just didn't know about it until reading this thread :)

I can cope with the oddities which Myth throws at us, but I can see why any problems hit by new users would seem like a brick wall. Even tuning/scanning and getting the Schedules Direct programme info in place is a bit of a pain, along with which channels to make visible, setting HD ones as higher priority etc, but thankfully this all doesn't have to be done too often :)

Overall I'm a very happy Myth user and like what it does for what I use it for, so many thanks to the devs for their many years of effort! :D
twitham1
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by twitham1 »

warpme wrote:
Sat Jan 14, 2023 2:30 pm

btw: In "Browse and Play" mode it might be useful to collect songs user played and offer option to "save this session" as playlist.
This might be option user selects from menu and maybe also - at exiting MythMusic - MythMusic can display popup and ask "Do you want to save this session as playlist?"
I have "Play Now" working well, please see: https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Talk:MythMu ... :_Play_Now I opted to simply add and play as this was simpler and I think the result makes sense. User can just save the list if he likes it. I hope this makes it into version 34!
twitham1
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by twitham1 »

vidtek wrote:
Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:28 pm
I find the music player philosophy totally incomprehensible and always have done. :?

The default of "all tracks" is an extremely weird choice. Playlist creation has me scratching my head, that should be the easiest thing to create, instead it is a very convoluted affair, definitely not remote friendly. :oops:

VLC is easier for a quick and dirty music player and that's saying something. :)
I think "all tracks" is first as it is the first thing you need after selecting something else. If I select a compilation for example, then I most likely want all tracks of that compilation next rather than one of its many artists. Once I select any node, the remaining options stay in order so it makes sense that at any time I will want "all tracks" of my selection so far.

But perhaps only at the top level entry point we could display "all tracks" at the end of the list. This might be hard for the browser widget to do. Fortunately Albums and Artists are most common and currently are only one or 2 right arrow keys away. Hmm, maybe the tree can stay the same but the second node (Albums) could be default selection saving 1 key press.

I hope my just mentioned "Play Now" feature improves playlist creation for you, see link to manual entry above.

Sorry, but my remote control does nothing in VLC. I cannot see how to make a play list in VLC with my remote - MythMusic is much easier! :D
pvrmine
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by pvrmine »

I've been using MythTV since 2004, across multiple hardware updates. My current combined FE/BE is an AMD Phenom II X6 box that I've had since 2011, with a few upgrades along the way. It's still fast enough to transcode ATSC 1.0 to h.264, so I keep using it.

I also run frontends on my Linux desktop, on macOS, and via WSL on Windows. I stream from the backend to Roku, especially curated playlists using Recording Groups. The latter have commercials removed - this used to be using the frontend's editor, now I do it with avidemux and wrote scripts to put the updated video files into the recorded table.

I record OTA with a Hauppauge USB stick and two pcHDTV HD3000 tuners.

I have over 35K recordings, some of which are record-and-keep - nostalgia shows from the 1950s through the 1980s, how-to programs from PBS. I'll have plenty to watch when I retire.

Code: Select all

MariaDB [mythconverg]> select sum(filesize)/1048576/1048576 from recorded;
+-------------------------------+
| sum(filesize)/1048576/1048576 |
+-------------------------------+
|                    8.66429057 |
+-------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.029 sec)
I'd like to keep using MythTV when ATSC 3.0 starts landing where I live.
vidtek
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by vidtek »

twitham1 wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2023 9:55 pm
vidtek wrote:
Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:28 pm
I find the music player philosophy totally incomprehensible and always have done. :?

The default of "all tracks" is an extremely weird choice. Playlist creation has me scratching my head, that should be the easiest thing to create, instead it is a very convoluted affair, definitely not remote friendly. :oops:

VLC is easier for a quick and dirty music player and that's saying something. :)
I think "all tracks" is first as it is the first thing you need after selecting something else. If I select a compilation for example, then I most likely want all tracks of that compilation next rather than one of its many artists. Once I select any node, the remaining options stay in order so it makes sense that at any time I will want "all tracks" of my selection so far.

But perhaps only at the top level entry point we could display "all tracks" at the end of the list. This might be hard for the browser widget to do. Fortunately Albums and Artists are most common and currently are only one or 2 right arrow keys away. Hmm, maybe the tree can stay the same but the second node (Albums) could be default selection saving 1 key press.

I hope my just mentioned "Play Now" feature improves playlist creation for you, see link to manual entry above.

Sorry, but my remote control does nothing in VLC. I cannot see how to make a play list in VLC with my remote - MythMusic is much easier! :D
Twitham - Using a remote in linux is now so much easier with evdev rather than the dog's breakfast that used to be lirc. Mapping a key combination such as ctrl_y to save a playlist, ctrl_f for open directory etc. in VLC is so easy.
Myth.32 Krnl. 5.15.0-73 QT5.15.2 ubntu 22.04.1 Intel i7-7700K GTX 1660 Nvdia Hauppge Quad tunerT2 HomerundualT1
twitham1
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by twitham1 »

I never used lirc as my Adesso ARC-1100 is a keyboard (and mouse) in the shape of a remote. So MythMusic just works and looks great 10 feet away. The only buttons the family needs to know are arrows, ok, escape, and the menu button. Since "Play Now" all the kids and wife can easily play anything at any time or flip over to internet radio or TV recordings. I'd find it more difficult explaining to them how to flip between VLC and MythTV so I am glad that is not needed!
twitham1
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by twitham1 »

paulh wrote:
Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:26 pm
We can see from the number of Scheduled Direct users and the Smolt data that MythTV is losing users at an ever increasing rate. We think one reason for this is it's getting harder and harder to record stuff because more services are becoming encrypted requiring proprietary boxes to view and record content and some services are moving to an on-demand type of service that are hard or impossible to record.


So the question is what improvements would you like to see in MythTV in the future that would persuade you to continue to use it?

Would you like to see better support for YouTube for example or a better video media library. Better music player? Support for IPTV services? What plugins do you use? What plugins would you like to see? Are you happy with the user interface or would you like to see a more modern one?


Give us your thoughts on what direction you would like to see MythTV take now it's original purpose is slowing being killed of.
(way late to this one... :lol: )

My worst fear is that MythTV breaks or OTA breaks. Sorry, I don't have time to watch commercials or pay for streams. I also can't watch anything now, only later if I get around to it. So only MythTV works! If they break recording with DRM on ATSC 3.0, then I will quit watching completely and still use MythTV for music, radio, games, pictures, videos. It is still my 10 foot view to all the home media and nothing comes close to having everything in 1 remote control interface.

Thanks for the most excellent software! Its original purpose still works for me!
BigEd
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by BigEd »

I love MythTV. I have been using it since 2010. If I can get back the "Play in Browser" feature on the Webfrontend, I'm a happy camper. I have a master and slave backend setup and they are working great. I looked at the new open source DVRs out there that people have been raving about and their backends can't be configured as a master and slave which is a deal breaker for me.

:idea: If I had one request which the new open source DVR was doing, it would be to create a new feature in MythVideo as part of retrieving metadata for Movies, to download subtitles from https://www.opensubtitles.org in the language your system is already configured in. This way, users don't have to manually download subtitles for their entire movie library. That will be neat. If this feature has already been implemented, I haven't seen it yet in version 33.1.

I know that once Ffmpeg works out the AC-4 audio issue, MythTV will add support for ATSC 3 which is currently a work in progress. Other than that, keep up the great work with the bug fixes and maintenance. You are doing great. Kudos to you all.

:?:
Why use OpenSubtitles.org?
- biggest multi-language subtitle database
- no registration needed to download subtitles
- advanced search filters (by genre, rating, year...)
- search for more than one language
- search for many subtitles simultaneously (multi-search)
- get search results by e-mail or rss
- site is "open" (you can get every page as parseable XML)
- support for coding web-applications (autodownload, upload)
- can act as a subtitle server for other subtitle sites
- we look for your feature requests (site still in development)
dscheive
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by dscheive »

I think mythtv is great I use it for DVR of broadcast tv to multiple tvs and the app. I think making it easier to install and set up is what would bring in more users.
klugja
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by klugja »

My local public TV station has moved a channel from 1080i to 480i on ATSC 1.0, and if we have to use ATSC 3.0 if we want the old HDTV back.

I don't see any Hauppage ATSC 3.0 tuners. I see only Geniatech and ADTH with USB dongle tuners.

What about the Tuners that have Ethernet? Can they be used with MythTV? Or is the internet only used for decryption keys on encrypted content?

It would be nice if there were ATSC 3.0 tuners that worked with MythTV.
white_haired_uncle
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by white_haired_uncle »

klugja wrote:
Fri Nov 10, 2023 6:46 am
My local public TV station has moved a channel from 1080i to 480i on ATSC 1.0, and if we have to use ATSC 3.0 if we want the old HDTV back.

I don't see any Hauppage ATSC 3.0 tuners. I see only Geniatech and ADTH with USB dongle tuners.

What about the Tuners that have Ethernet? Can they be used with MythTV? Or is the internet only used for decryption keys on encrypted content?

It would be nice if there were ATSC 3.0 tuners that worked with MythTV.
I've been using the HD Homerun tuners (network based) with myth for many years (though lately I had to move off a RHEL based distro to continue to do so).

As far as 3.0, it's a complete mess right now. Pretty much everyone is broadcasting AC4 sound which has no official ffmpeg support. And the broadcasters are starting to encrypt channels, though they are still figuring out what the rules around encryption are going to be. It's not clear if software based DVR like myth will ever be able to support encrypted 3.0 channels. And LG, one of the few TV makers which support 3.0 natively on some models just dropped support. Personally, I wouldn't spend a dime of other peoples' money chasing 3.0 support at any level right now. I think I know how things will work out in the end, and I'm a lot more positive than most, but for right now it's DOA in my book.
klugja
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by klugja »

If I get an AC-4 compatible audio receiver (if such things exist), can I do pass through somehow? Currently I do AC-3 pass through, which of course my current receiver won't work with AC-4. I use the iec958 driver (TOS-link) with AC-3 on my current mother board. Does iec958 and TOS-link work with AC-4?
white_haired_uncle
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Re: The future of MythTV

Post by white_haired_uncle »

klugja wrote:
Sun Nov 12, 2023 8:26 pm
If I get an AC-4 compatible audio receiver (if such things exist), can I do pass through somehow? Currently I do AC-3 pass through, which of course my current receiver won't work with AC-4. I use the iec958 driver (TOS-link) with AC-3 on my current mother board. Does iec958 and TOS-link work with AC-4?
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4374&p=26206&hilit=AC4#p26206
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