Answering Machine & fax Viewer? (1 Viewer)

[Anonymous]

I have posted a few threads requesting similar things in the past. To clear up a couple of things:

For me in the futur, an ISDN Modem or a fax machine are in the museum

Actually, I think you will be surprised how many people are still using dial-up and ISDN access from home. A lot of people just can't get DSL/Cable connections in their area, and some people just choose not to got to the expense. These sort of connections are certainly going to be around for quite some time. Faxes are still regularly used by some companies. It is not uncommon to still be asked to fax things to a company you are dealing with.

A lot of people who use MediaPortal, do so on their only computer, i.e. not a dedicated HTPC box. Therefore they will already have an analogue modem in the box. Why not use it?



Modems could be used for lots of great things, even if you do have a dsl connection to the internet. For example:

CallerID - have a nice OSD showing who is calling. See YAC (open-source) for some inspiration http://sunflowerhead.com/software/yac/

Answerphone - why use a seperate machine for this?

And voicemail in this mobile era is always on on your cell-phone.

I want an answermachine for my home landline as well. Why should the people calling my home number not get a chance to leave a message as well. Could we not adapt something like this MediaPortal http://www.ancyba.com

Fax machine - Ok, maybe not used that often, but if you've got the hardware why not use it? Sometimes its handy to send off a quick fax from home.


Another plugin that I know lots of modem users would love is a button or OSD for connecting and disconnecting. I normally wouldn't leave a modem permanently connected, and sometimes you want to quickly connect to refresh the weather without having to close/minimise MediaPortal before doing so. I am not a programmer, but I can imagine that it wouldn't be too dificult to add a toogle button, connected to a rasdial.exe command. Maybe have a small OSD in the corner to show when you are connected.

Anyway, just to let you know that I think there could be some great plugins made in this area. Not everyone would use them, but that's what open-source is all about. If anyone wanted to work on these sort of add-ons they should be really encouraged. Please don't mock others ideas just because you wouldn't use them. Might be interesting to do a poll on how many dialup users there are here. Bet its a least 10%.

Just my 2 cents guys.

 

[Anonymous]

It would be great to have a way to have access to an answering machine in MP. I would want to access another app (like YAC does) to retrieve voice messages though. . .no telephone line at the HTPC, though that is where I would like to check it. . .most convenient place as I walk into the house.

 

[mzemina]

I sure would like to see (after the bugs are worked out of the main problem areas) this feature added to allow voicemail on TV (as well as from internet). The inclusion of callerID was a great feature! Next I think would be to see callerID log on screen and then call back feature. It seems that faxes aren't used as much as they used to be in the US, I think (my opinion only) people are just emailing attachments (unless they are low tech and still use a fax).

Mike Zemina