Topic: MythTV Frontend (aka mythfrontend) on Infocast, POC (Proof of Concept)
I managed to get Infocast setup as a myth frontend using Debian chroot method (with direct boot into chroot'ed environment through a debugchumby script under /psp). Below is a video showing a demo of this:
Since the touchscreen on my Infocast isn't working (as some of you may know from my other thread), I decided to use the iPhone App called MythRemote to remotely control the MythTV frontend on the Infocast. MythRemote takes advantage of the ability of mythfrontend to be remotely controlled over a TCP/IP port (i.e. no infrared or RF signal is required as long as both the iPhone + MythFrontend are on the same LAN and the frontend allows permission for the app to communicate on a TCP/IP port).
Everything works as excepted from a mythfrontend perceptive. But there is just a slight tiny bit of problem! :-) Video playback stutters, and CPU starvation occurs on the Infocast due to the video being decoded purely in software. Myth does have the ability to specify an external player for video playback (in lieu of the built in internal player). If someone knows of a command line player that would utilize Marvell PXA168's hardware capabilities for video playback, that would help greatly. The player ideally would be simply enough to be executed as: playerxyz <videofile> (and not be a .swf / flash based application/player).
I've tried mplayer and I've gotten the same results. I've been thinking about transcoding the file in real time to FLV using ffmpeg, but not sure if the overhead of transcoding (in real time) would be too much for the CPU too handle while playing back the FLV file which I would hope would get offloaded to some sort of a hardware decoder as the PXA168's datasheet does call for targeting up to 720p video playback! (Source: http://www.marvell.com/selector_guide/d … 168_pb.pdf - Page 2 - Line 6 under Benefits).
Anyway, some work in progress... any suggestions & comments would be welcome to make this project a success to the point where playback of at least 480p video is possible.