[mythtv-users] MythTV core structure.

[Steele Price]

I am trying to understand why MythTV is laid out in such a way that it
requires a capture card to function at all.

For example, what if I wanted to use Myth for just accessing all the media
files on a frontend without any TV at all.  Currently I don't see any way to
do this without just having a broken TV portion.

Shouldn't TV be a module as well instead of the root of the entire system?

I would expect that the master backend would just be an administrative
interface to the database and the file structure that could be applied to
any frontend.

I am trying to use MythTV to organize gigantic libraries of media files
which include music, pictures, and video, but really don't need the live TV
portion, or would not actually use it on all frontends.

Ideally, I would see modules being the focus of the "master backend" and not
capturing, while capturing may be important to most users, it certainly
isn't to everyone.  It would also make more sense for a frontend to just get
all it's configuration information (file directories, database information,
and common system capabilities) my installing the frontend and just asking
for an appropriate backend to connect to.

Is this scenario possible or am I trying to go down the wrong path?
Unfortunately, the way I am starting to see how things are architected they
just don't make alot of sense unless I have completely missed something.  I
first became interested in MythTV because it appeared to be the furthest
along in development, but maybe because it started as "just a pvr" it's core
was already set and it was too late to back it out into the scenario I just
described.

Should I take this to the dev list or is no one else interested in this type
of system?

What I had envisioned was a central file server for the whole house/office
that any frontend could connect to, different frontends could have different
capabilities based on the settings in the backend.  Scenario: I could have a
viewing frontend in the kids room that could only get certain
channels/videos/music, the frontend in the living room gets other channels
and can act as an administration point, the frontend in the parents bedroom
could do the same, but also gets web access where the other don't, then
there is another TV server that just handles all the recording and
transports the files to the master/file server.

Myth has done all the heavy lifting getting the functionality there, but it
appears not to be able to be distributed in this fashion, nor can it get a
set of network accessible files without mapping all those files in the
frontend with autofs/nfs/nis configurations that can challenge even a
seasoned user.  Myth needs a frontend that can just be installed without
alot of fuss for viewing and attach to a distributed network of components.

Steele Price
CTO
Digital Dreamshop
http://xtcp.net