MythIpTV Beta 1

Some folk at LCA expressed interest in my video blog aggregator for MythTV. I’ve cleaned it up, and just sent out the first release:

    Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 09:38:04 -0800
    From: Michael Still 
    To: Discussion about mythtv 
    Subject: MythIpTv Beta 1
    
    Hi.
    
    I've been recently wanting a video blog aggregator which integrates with
    MythTV. Specifically, I wanted the videos to appear as recordings. I've
    had a horrible script for that for a few months, but ended up cleaning
    it up when it occurred to me that Akimbo (http://www.akimbo.com) is just
    a per user RSS feed, and something a lot like MythTV.
    
    So, I wrote MythIpTv. It takes RSS feeds, imports the entries in the
    feed and builds a TODO list. It then downloads shows and imports them
    into the MythTV recordings menu.
    
    The code has only been tested by me, so if you're interested in giving
    it a try, please take good backups. You can find the code here:
    http://www.stillhq.com/mythtv/mythiptv/source/beta-1/mythiptv
    
    Before use, you need to make a temporary data directory in your current
    working directory:
    
    mkdir data
    
    You use mythiptv like this:
    
    ./mythiptv --url <url to RSS feed> <show title>
    
    or
    
    ./mythiptv --file <RSS file on local disk> <show title>
    
    I've been using Google Video to test this, as the AVI format they use is
    natively supported by the MythTV player. This isn't true for a lot of
    RSS feeds and transcoding isn't implemented yet, so if you want
    something to test with, you might want to use the same command line as me:
    
    ./mythiptv --url
    "http://video.google.com/videofeed?type=search&q=engedu&so=1&num=20&output=rss"
    "Goole EngEdu"
    
    That command just builds a TODO list. You then need to download some of
    the shows. You do that like this:
    
    ./mythiptv --download <number of shows to download>
    
    Once downloaded, the shows will appear in the recordings menu.
    
    I would be really interested in people's comments on the code, and
    suggestions for improvement. There are a couple of things I know about
    already:
    
     - it really needs transcoding
     - the is no graphical UI yet
    
    Cheers,
    Mikal