2005-08-20, 22:48
imo a my tv section would be a great addition to xbmc. jslawler is currently working on a tv guide for xbmc which is coming along quite nicely (there is a thread about it elsewhere). in the future i could see a suitable home for his work in a my tv section. i think the key to doing something this big would be in realizing that it won't come over night and it will take time to develop something like this.
i think a good starting point would be creating the windows for the section and getting the basic file system elements working disregarding anything fancy at first. so you would essentially have a my tv button on the home screen and the ability to freely roam local and remote shared directories.
once that is in place someone could experiment with different methods of media management and implement the "scan" feature to create a database of your tv media and supply a few different views. those of you who were around when all the changes were going on with different views in videos and music will remember this took time and it went through a few different phases before we ended up with our current views (which are perfect imo!
realizing that it doesn't stop there, i think it was spiff who was writing code to get info from tvtome, now tv.com, i could see this kind of feature being added at this point. not sure how exactly this would work and distinguish one season and episode from the other. we might need to establish a file naming convention to make it work properly, but there's a lot of other work to be done first.
i could see the tv guide being developed by jslawler finding a happy home in a my tv section after everything else was done. the reason i say this is if there was enough interest in getting live tv in xbmc to the masses, there could potentially be interfaces with other projects like mediaportal (extremely friendly to beginners all the way through advanced users) and mythtv. there are already a few python scripts out there that establish this kind of connectivity, but i think it is time for live tv to make it's way to the masses through being a default feature!
the above features will be a lot of work, and this would be a rather huge project, but when you put everything into context and look at everything xbmc can do now that it couldn't do 6 months ago, this project would need developer interest more than anything else and it could be a reality.
i have spoken to jslawler about possibly developing a my tv section and he has expressed interest in it. :kickass: please realize this will be a huge project and it will take more than one developer to make it a reality. also, i wouldn't expect the official team to make something like this a priority as there is still more work to be done in other existing parts of xbmc. this means this would be a great place for anyone with the skills to start coding for xbmc, especially if you really want to show off what you can do in hopes of being asked to be an official developer! if you have the skills and want to start working on making this a reality, please get in contact with me, you can email me at [email="[email protected]"][email protected][/email] or just send me a pm.
regards,
los93sol
i think a good starting point would be creating the windows for the section and getting the basic file system elements working disregarding anything fancy at first. so you would essentially have a my tv button on the home screen and the ability to freely roam local and remote shared directories.
once that is in place someone could experiment with different methods of media management and implement the "scan" feature to create a database of your tv media and supply a few different views. those of you who were around when all the changes were going on with different views in videos and music will remember this took time and it went through a few different phases before we ended up with our current views (which are perfect imo!
realizing that it doesn't stop there, i think it was spiff who was writing code to get info from tvtome, now tv.com, i could see this kind of feature being added at this point. not sure how exactly this would work and distinguish one season and episode from the other. we might need to establish a file naming convention to make it work properly, but there's a lot of other work to be done first.
i could see the tv guide being developed by jslawler finding a happy home in a my tv section after everything else was done. the reason i say this is if there was enough interest in getting live tv in xbmc to the masses, there could potentially be interfaces with other projects like mediaportal (extremely friendly to beginners all the way through advanced users) and mythtv. there are already a few python scripts out there that establish this kind of connectivity, but i think it is time for live tv to make it's way to the masses through being a default feature!
the above features will be a lot of work, and this would be a rather huge project, but when you put everything into context and look at everything xbmc can do now that it couldn't do 6 months ago, this project would need developer interest more than anything else and it could be a reality.
i have spoken to jslawler about possibly developing a my tv section and he has expressed interest in it. :kickass: please realize this will be a huge project and it will take more than one developer to make it a reality. also, i wouldn't expect the official team to make something like this a priority as there is still more work to be done in other existing parts of xbmc. this means this would be a great place for anyone with the skills to start coding for xbmc, especially if you really want to show off what you can do in hopes of being asked to be an official developer! if you have the skills and want to start working on making this a reality, please get in contact with me, you can email me at [email="[email protected]"][email protected][/email] or just send me a pm.
regards,
los93sol
