[Pkg-mythtv-maintainers] Debian Free Software Guildlines compliant mythtv package

Mark Purcell msp at debian.org
Mon Mar 27 21:44:19 UTC 2006


I'm working on a couple of patches to get a DFSG compliant version of mythtv.

I have a couple of ideas, which I'm experiment on alioth project svn site, and 
approach mythtv-dev once my ideas had firmed up, but it came to your 
attention early.  

For those who are interested in this project there is a mailing list:
  Debian MythTV Team <pkg-mythtv-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org>
and svn archive:
  http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-mythtv

Options:

0.	Remove mp3 support from mythtv. Means recordings are much larger, DVB and
PVR cards recordings can't be played back.  Increases size by 500Mb/ hr for
everyone else.  Not backwards compatible with existing recordings.  Not a
good option - not viable.

1.	Make liblame a runtime rather than a buildtime dependency.  This satisfies
the requirements for DFSG, as is the approach that was taken for KDE going to
3.1 onwards.  (Rev 1.24 of audiocd.cpp)

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64099
http://webcvs.kde.org/kdebase/kioslave/audiocd/Attic/audiocd.cpp?rev=1.50&hid
eattic=0&view=log

Perhaps a fair change to the mythtv codebase, but given that KDE have done it
allready it could be a fairly straight forward cut and lift.

However it would want to be a smart implementation, so if liblame is
 available runtime, it is used, but if not available runtime then we are back
 to large recordings and no backwards compatibility. :-(

2.	Split out the audio encoding and decoding functionality.  libmad
<http://www.underbit.com/products/mad/> is DFSG compliant and could provide a
Layer III decoding function. Requires a rewrite of
libs/libmythtv/nuppeldecoder.cpp to use libmad, as opposed to liblame to do
the Layer III decoding.

3.	Use something which is DFSG compliant for the audio encoding. libtwolame
<http://www.twolame.org/> could provide a Layer II encoder (MP2), not quite
MP3, but at least something in the way of compression, and the API is similar
to lame. This would require a rewrite of
libs/libmythtv/NuppelVideoRecorder.cpp. However for the same reasons why
vorbis wouldn't be good, a Layer II encoder might not cut it either. Although
DVB does use Layer II audio compression for broadcasting.

Perhaps a hybrid of something like 1&2 would be the eventual solution.

Mark
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-mythtv-maintainers/attachments/20060327/b1ae6763/attachment.pgp


More information about the Pkg-mythtv-maintainers mailing list