[mythtvnz] General questions

[Ross and Jemima Knudsen]

Steven Ellis wrote:
>
> Yes as long as you take all of the appropriate steps, some of which 
> have already been covered here.
>
> For any proprietary codecs such as MPEG4/MPEG2/H.264 you can license 
> them. Interestingly the MP3 patents mostly don't apply here in NZ.
>
> As has been mentioned there are issues around format shifting of 
> non-audio formats which is where you will be taking a risk if you 
> leave transcoding features enabled.
>
> Most of the rest comes down to GPL  compliance. With myPVR we made 
> sure we contributed back upstream and also made source available to 
> our customers.
>
Thanks everyone for your comments regarding the copyright enfringement 
thing.  I was more interested in the whole codec thing for example with 
mp3s where I believe the actual codec is under patent or something.  I 
was just what liability you might run into with selling commercial Myth 
systems.  I can understand that the transcoding options would probably 
cause problems but wouldnt' be a problem for TV at the moment as we 
can't transcode it at the moment anyway.

Regarding the GPL issues.  I have no problem there.  I think it would be 
pretty disrespectful to improve Myth and then not to contribute it back 
to the community who gave you it to start with!  Only things I could see 
you wouldn't give back would be things like a customised GUI or some 
configuration modifications you made.
>
>
> Is this with MythTV 0.21 or 0.22. A lot of the UPNP/DLNA support can 
> vary dramatically from client to client in my experience.
>
>
I've been burnt too many times to use bleeding edge software so I'm 
sticking to 0.21 until I am convinced its stable (some may debate 
whether 0.22 is bleeding edge or not).  I just think it would be cool to 
get a DLNA TV and not have to worry about a frontend.  UPNP seem to have 
a specification for controlling most backend functions (scheduling 
recordings, EPG etc) that you need with room to implement custom 
functions as well.  Having a standard communication protocol might make 
it easier to have different Myth versions interoperating which isn't 
possible at the moment.  You could also then just run mysql locally 
instead of over the network, and there is room for 
security/authentication too.  Can Myth currently handle different user 
levels say if you have untrusted users on the network?