[vdr] Re: vdr integration into Freevo

[Ove Risberg <Ove.Risberg@octocode.se>]

Hi,

On Wed, 2004-07-07 at 16:26, Dirk Meyer wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm one of the developers of Freevo (freevo.sf.net) and own a DVB-T
> card for three weeks now. On a quick look, it looks like Freevo and
> vdr have the same purpose, but IMHO this is not the case. 
> 
> Freevo can't do anything. It's only a UI for other tools. The old Unix
> saying: the right tool for the right job. We start mplayer for video
> files, but xine for dvds because of dvd menus. Freevo selects the
> player and how to start it. And I guess the right tool for watching
> and recording DVB is vdr. And if you don't have a full featured card,
> it makes no sense to play avi files with vdr and send the output to
> xine with vdr-xine.
> 
> I wrote a small plugin for Freevo which replaces the normal tv menu in
> Freevo with vdr. One major problem is the interface: we don't have
> buttons like red and green, but we have buttons like DISPLAY. The
> navigation is completly different between Freevo and vdr and that is
> very confusing. 

I have also written a small vdr plugin for freevo and I added new
buttons in freevo for red, green, yellow, blue and back to be able to
navigate in vdr.

You can download my plugin named vdr-xine.pl from
http://freevo.sourceforge.net/addons/

I use the vdr-xine 0.4.2 plugin to display the video... there are other
solutions to do this and why not make several freevo plugins with
different solutions (softdevice, softmpeg, ...) and then the user can
choose what is best for him/her.

> 
> I don't know the vdr API and I'm busy with Freevo hacking, so I'm
> looking for some help to integrate vdr into Freevo.
> 
> I need:
> 
> 1. I way to display vdr on budget cards. vdr-xine looks good.

It works great for me... and I have two full feature cards so this is
not just for budget cards.

> 
> 2. I way to control channel switching and recording. Since the
>    interface is different, I want to avoid using the vdr menu. Freevo
>    has a record server and a program display, so I want to send the
>    needed informations directly into vdr without the UI.
> 
>    So I need a program which can be controled via stdin/stdout to send
>    commands to vdr and receive information what vdr is doing right
>    now. 

It should not be too difficult to implement the svdrp interface in a
freevo plugin.
Interfacing the freevo record server with vdr is the next thing I will
try to do with my plugin.

> 
> On the other hand, for full featured cards I need a dvb-sdl frontend
> to display Freevo on the card.

I do not think this is absolutely necessary and it is difficult. 

> 
> 
> 
> Anyone interessed in helping me here?

I am interested...

> 
> 
> Dischi
> 
> -- 
> "To know recursion, you must first know recursion"
> 
> 

/Ove