VDR Integration
Contents
State Of The Integration
Currently, interaction between LinuxMCE and VDR is mainly done via the SVDR protocol. Remote control is designed to be done with IR remote controls. Scheduling and EPG is done using the VDR OSD. Recordings can be watch either thru the Videos screen, or thru the VDR OSD.
What needs to be done
To have full control over VDR, and to always know, what state VDR is in at any given time, we need to have vdr-plugin. A vdr-plugin has direct access to events happening within VDR, and can export these events to a LinuxMCE VDRPlugin.
Proposed:
A general way of how to control TV apps like VDR or MythTV. I propose that we create a general TVAppPlugin that have all things that we make available in our UI. No matter if it is on-screen or off-screen UIs.
As a second level there is a interface that do VDR or MythTV specifics.
OSD or not OSD
The VDR OSD looks and acts different than the LinuxMCE OSD. Question is, are we going to be able to re-create all the needed pages from the VDR OSD in LinuxMCE screens, and do we want to?
Recordings
The recordings are currently shown with their filenames vdr.001 to vdr.255 and with a title entry. This does not look nice, and is irritating. The xxx.vdr files should be excluded from the file listing, and the title entry be the only thing visible.
Remote Control
The current VDRPlugin is designed to work with the on-screen orbiter and a regular IR remote control.
Proposed: All Remotes should be handled by lmce. This way we dont need to do any special coding to interface a new remote against vdr everytime someone want to use a remote we dont know about.
We need to create/define what is needed to interface against vdr: Change channel. Pause, Record etc. Play recording. With xine or with vdr?
Offscreen Orbiter
Off-screen orbiters use UI1. The current UI1 remote control for VDR lacks a couple of standard features
- No lighting control
- No off-screen channel list
- No off-screen EPG listing
- No off-screen timer settings
The lighting control and channel list can easily be implemented with a new screen. The EPG listing is a different beast, as not all information seems to be provided by the plugin. And there is currently no provisioning for displaying and controlling timer.
Proposed: Be able to do everything that onscreen orbiter can do.
