Well... heck. My Freevo and I had gone rogue and been off the grid for a few years now... I can't remember the last time I updated from SVN. I think I've had the Freevo for nearly a decade at this point, from humble beginnings in a beige mini-tower case with a keyboard for control, to it's current digs in an Antec HTPC case with iMON VFD display and remote, recently upgraded to allow full 1080i playback via the VGA connector to my ancient rear-projection CRT HDTV.
In fact, I was gearing up to come back on the list with an interesting announcement. I finally got tired of having to choose between Gray's Anatomy or Glee on Thursday nights, plus having to take over the set-top box to record was a less-than-ideal solution (but it worked great) and sometimes I'd not notice it was recording and change channels or turn off the box (meaning to turn it on). Plus, sometimes I'd _want_ to watch TV, but there's a recording that needs to be done... So back on Black Friday weekend, I picked up an HDHomerun Prime box from Newegg on a discount. For those who haven't heard of it, it's a three tuner CableCard box that runs over your network. Controlled over network by your computer and throws back the raw MPEG-TS stream for saving or streaming/viewing. I've been on a total coding bender for the last three weeks or more. I've written a recording plugin for the HDHomerun Prime that handles the multiple tuners (and may theoretically work with any of the HDHomerun boxes with small modifications). It also works around a flaw in the firmware by setting up a ping to the HDHomerun box while recording, keeping the stream to the Freevo from stalling or dropping. I've re-written swaths of code in the recordingserver so it will now: * Handle multiple simultaneous recordings for any given number of tuners (reported by the recording plugin) * Properly handle back-to-back recordings (delayed recordings where end-time for one is start-time for another) when all tuners are in use * Conflict resolution for any given number of tuners (still testing this one, but early results are very promising!) * Positive communication between recording server and recording plugin: if the recording fails to start, we now know it. It will highlight yellow in the web interface and the server will keep attempting to start the recording every minute until it is successful or the program is over. I also tweaked the thumbnail generator so it only pulls I-frames for the .PNGs (instead of half-built P-frames from jumping into the middle of the stream), handles the fact the TS streams never start at zero-time and doesn't assume we want a 4:3 thumbnail (widescreen thumbnails!). There are still a few issues with the automatically generated thumbnails, but I'm planning to sort those next. It works so well I can't believe I wrote it all myself! I had a Saturday where it was recording two or three programs simultaneously for hours at a time and it performed flawlessly. Granted, this was before I had the conflict resolution or delayed recording pieces written, so I had to vet the recording schedule by hand to make sure there weren't any conflicts. That was a real brain-bender! "These two start at 19:00, this one ends at 20:30 and this one starts at 20:30..." If anyone is interested in using this, I'd be more than happy to send along the plugin and the necessary patches to other parts of the system. I'd say the plugin is definitely at a Release Candidate level: it works great but I still have more plans for it. At present it only works for recording... as I don't use the Freevo to watch live TV, I haven't looked into that area, but it should be theoretically possible. In fact, the HDHomerun Prime does targeted streaming, so it should be as easy as making mplayer listen and starting a stream from the HDHomerun. I do have plans for a page on the webserver that will allow one to easily start and control a stream to your computer, but that's still in the planning stages. Of course, all that would never have been possible without all of you, this wonderful, crazy community behind the Freevo. Dischi and Jason, nothing but the utmost respect and heartfelt thanks for leading this project. Thanks to you, I learned Python, finally got my head wrapped around object-oriented programming and have a functional DVR that I can tweak when I decide something isn't right about it. I wouldn't and likely couldn't have done any of it without your leadership on this one. Life changes, we all know that... and I certainly have no plans on abandoning my Freevo. MythTV and XBMC may be slicker and more fully featured, but Freevo is written in a language I understand and can play with. I'll happily accept being the less-than-cool kid on the block in exchange for that kind of freedom. My thanks extend to _everyone_ that has been a part of this journey, from the ones who rolled up their sleeves and dug into the guts of the system, to those who applied little tweaks that made all the difference. And especially to those who dared to document it all. It's been amazing, and it sure as heck isn't over. It's just... changing. Evolving. James Trietsch Oregon, USA On 1/20/2014 10:38, Dirk Meyer wrote: > Hi, > > I have no idea how many people still read this list, how many people > still use Freevo 1.x, and how many people use 2.0 from git (I guess that > is only me). > > I failed to get a release of Freevo 2 out. I changed too much, a > complete rewrite and some parts are also written three or four times. My > fault, I know -- an error made years ago and when noticed, it was too > late to change it. And since I started a new job four years ago my time > working on Freevo got smaller and smaller every month. Jason also is > completely busy with his job. > > I still say Freevo 2 is ready to use, but I will not release it. I'm not > sure it works with the latest clutter or gstreamer, I only know it works > for me. It lacks many important features such as DVD playback (I have a > BluRay Player) and TV recording. I do not need it and I don't have time > to code it. > > Besides that, XBMC has a much bigger community, UPnP is enough for many > people (even I use NAS + BubbleUPnP + TV sometimes) and new development > such as Chromecast will reduce Freevo's usefulness even further. > > I will continue to use Freevo 2, I may even write an Android client for > it (after learning Python with Freevo which was useful for getting my > current job, hacking Android is a good next step), but I see no real > future for Freevo without a live community and more people hacking code. > If someone contributes something, I will add it. If someone needs help > to get Freevo 2 running, I will provide it. > > Since we also lack someone maintaining the server we host and I do not > want to pay for something we don't need, I will shut it down at the end > of February. This means the SVN and the Wiki will be gone. If someone > wants a backup of the Wiki please tell me. The code is already on github > and will remain there. The mailing list on SF will continue and so will > the mail server hosting freevo.org and all mail addresses will continue > to be valid. > > Maybe after some time someone resurrects Freevo. I would love to pass > the maintainership over to someone just as I took it over from Krister > years ago. Maybe someone takes the kaa-stuff and writes something new > and better. I'm happy to assist and I think the same is true for Jason. > Maybe I will release something someday based on the current code. > > It was a great time, I learned a lot and it was much fun. > > > Regards, > > Dischi > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > CenturyLink Cloud: The Leader in Enterprise Cloud Services. > Learn Why More Businesses Are Choosing CenturyLink Cloud For > Critical Workloads, Development Environments & Everything In Between. > Get a Quote or Start a Free Trial Today. > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=119420431&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk > _______________________________________________ > Freevo-users mailing list > Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CenturyLink Cloud: The Leader in Enterprise Cloud Services. 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