Interface for external schedulers à la myHTPC TV PlugIn ?

Hi there,

while I haven´t found the time to look that deep into MediaPortal, I already love the
"M$ Mediacenter"-like look.

I know that there is already a integrated TV module with a scheduler and support for multiple
TV cards. Nevertheless I think a open interface to external schedulers would provide a more
flexible approach. myHTPC has solved this very good by separating the GUI plus EPG from the
TV module by using scripting components. May be a future version of Mediaportal could provide
such a functionality.

An external scheduler could run in the background or program recordings via SCHTASKS. External
Recording Tools such as WinTVCap are able to record while sitting in the system tray consuming
minimal of CPU time (~ 5% on a P4 2.4 GHz). Also it doesn´t "disturb" the user while
recording. K!TV works the same way. Only a task tray icon and no window popping up.

Many people I know, don´t use their PC as HTPC only but as workstation as well. So a GUI based
Scheduler / EPG is nice for programming your recordings but should not be needed for recording itself.

Yes, yes, I know that MP is open-source but I neither have the time, nor the interest to implement
some sort of scheduling interface for MP. For my purposes (MPEG4 realtime encoding at CIF resolution
using a PIII-850 with K!TV) MP is way to cpu-hungry. So I choose to write my own "HTPC"-frontend in Delphi
using a low-requirement implementation (-> Image stretched to a full-screen Form with transparent Labels).

So this is more an idea than a real feature request...

Regards,
-H