Entering Frontend standby when playback is paused

[waynemcdougall]

Summary:
I propose MythTV FrontEnd should have the ability to enter standby mode when Live TV, Video, Recordings and DVD playback is paused.

Rationale:
Allowing the Frontend to go into standby mode allows the backend to shutdown. And any other actions that an idle FrontEnd may trigger, such as powering down an AV receiver. This allows power savings, reduced heat and a quieter room.

Usage case:
Children watching a recording, pausing playback, and then leaving the TV while attending to other activities.

Limitations of existing options:
1. While paused playback does allow the screensaver to activate, this does not allow the backend to shutdown, not any standby mode events to trigger.
2. LiveTV does have an idle timeout system. However this is designed to detect ongoing playback without an (awake) audience, as opposed to the deliberate pausing of playback. It would be reasonable to expect to enter standby mode in a shorter period of time when playback is paused. We do not want frequent interruptions during playback by shortening this idle timout which works in LiveTV when both playing and paused.

Proposed solution:
Enable the standby idle time when playback is paused
Advantages: Easy to implement, works
Disadvantages: Exiting a paused LiveTV will stop the live recording, loses playback position
Ideas on addressing disadvantages:
i) suck it up - you shouldn't have left it paused that long when you have an idle timer set
ii) don't implement for livetv
iii) Add a prompt querying going into standby mode when paused, as per the idle timeout query on LiveTV
iv) Automatically add a bookmark when standby exiting a paused playback - but more complicated and would wipe an existing bookmark. So only add a bookmark where one doesn't already exist. So in worst case just have to find playback position manually.

Alternative idea:
If this approach is unacceptable, I would request that the FrontEnd status API include a way of determining if the playback is paused so an external script can monitor and take appropriate action. This could be either a new state row, or perhaps the existing state could be extended so "WatchingDVD" becomes "WatchingDVD (Paused)"

Conclusion:
I would welcome any comments, criticisms or ideas for suggested improvements to these ideas or other approaches.

[Gribnif]

I can't say what happens in Live TV, but I know for certain that xscreensaver kicks in after the expected timeout when playback is paused while playing a Recording.

At one point I played with having this trigger an external script to put my frontend computer, TV and receiver into standby mode, but found it to be too unreliable to use.

[bill6502]

The Frontend/GetStatus could do what you'd like. The state, for example:
'state': 'WatchingLiveTV plus the 'secondsplayed': '30' looks like the only
2 fields of interest. The 'secondsplayed' key will freeze while in the pause
mode. If you want some Python tools that parse the output, comment here
and I'll paste them.