[mythtvnz] The Paradigm Shift

[Steve Hodge]

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 9:01 PM, Brett Miller <blmiller at slingshot.co.nz>wrote:

> >>On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 5:26 PM, Brett Miller <blmiller at slingshot.co.nz>
> >>wrote:
> >>LiveTV should work flawlessly because this should have been debugged
> >>months/years ago.
>
> >It works flawlessly for me. Not that I use it.
>
> Sorry but how can you be so sure then ?
>

Perhaps I should have said "I don't use it, but the other people who have
used my system have never complained". I do use it for testing occasionally
and sometimes for sport like cricket. I've never seen any problems.

>>Playback of an active recording using navigation (pause, FF etc) should
> >>work.
>
> >Again, works for me.
>
> It just does not work, it screws up the current position & you can not
> navigate into parts of the recorded file.
> This has had displayed the same behaviour for all my experience of MythTV.
> Please try it inside of first half hour of the news.
>

I do this a lot with sports. I've never experienced the problems you're
describing.

I've been using MythTV for 5 years. In my experience, and from what I've
seen on the main MythTV mailing list over that time, the issues you are
seeing are not typical. They are most likely caused by something specific to
your setup.


> >You seem to think there is some sort of major problem with Live TV. There
> >isn't. There are certain setups or >situations where it doesn't work as
> >well as it could.
>
> I think the problems are not major, I would imagine the problems are really
> simple.
>

If they were really simple they would probably have been fixed, even with
disinterested developers. I suspect that any problems that remain are due to
difficult corner cases and odd configurations

> There have been complaints about these problems and the standard response
> > has been this:
> > "the >developers don't use that functionality and so these issues are not
> > a priority for them.
> >  If you want them fixed then submit a patch".
> >What do you think is unreasonable about that position?
>
> There is absolutely nothing unreasonable about that position except if it
> denies there is a problem.
>

It doesn't deny there is a problem. It simply states that the developers
have higher priorities and if you don't like it you're welcome to do
something constructive about it. Continuing to complain is not constructive.
Produce some debug traces at least, or better yet a patch.


> Could I suggest the notion of paying for some hours of code debugging for a
> specific issue ?
>

You're certainly welcome to approach any developer with a contract offer. I
suspect it's unlikely that you'd be able to agree on a price. OTOH, a
"bounty" has worked at least once with MythTV as the multi-record
functionality was developed that way.


> Or an on-line user voting system ?
>

No. The idea has been raised in the past and dismissed. Open source software
development is not a democracy. Developers work on what they want to work on
and generally don't take to kindly to "suggestions" that they should be
working on something else.

The tone of your initial message (" Spoken like a true software developer
that can not / will not debug her/his code. LiveTV should work flawlessly
because this should have been debugged months/years ago.") is pretty
unpleasant. You should realise that you have no entitlement - all you can do
is politely ask (beg even) someone to do something about it. I don't think
your message was particularly polite.

Cheers,
Steve
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ourshack.com/pipermail/mythtvnz/attachments/20091027/fc83dedd/attachment.htm