[Approved] Port SlimTv to MPExtended (1 Viewer)

[Oxan]

The current TV client in MP2 uses TV4Home Core Service, on which development has halted. The MPExtended Service is it's successor. The API changes in the TV part are fairly minimal, and consist of only a few renamed properties. While the MPExtended API isn't frozen yet the part MP2 uses won't change anymore. Given this situation, I think it's a good idea to migrate the TV client to the MPExtended service.

I've pushed a patch for this to my fork on GitHub. It consists of two parts:

• Change the SlimTv4HomeProvider to the new MPExtended API.
• Rename SlimTv4HomeProvider to SlimMPExtendedProvider. This part isn't really required but I think it'll confuse people if the old name is kept.

I haven't actually tested these changes yet (just compiled them), but I don't think they'll break anything.

I also found the folder Incubator/TV4Home, but I don't think it's being used anymore. Let me know if I should update that one too.

 

[morpheus_xx]

AW: Port SlimTv to MPExtended

Nice work! I will try this for sure...

 

[Oxan]

Thanks! I understand it if I'm too late, but we (TV4Home and MPExtended developers) would really like it if this could be included in the alpha.

 

[morpheus_xx]

The slimtv plugin itself won't be part of the alpha release installer. But it will be provided as plugin. Currently the focus is on the core parts, but after alpha I will sure continue work on SlimTv...

Depending on the amount of changes the new version will be ready soon.

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

 

[FreakyJ]

AW: Port SlimTv to MPExtended

https://github.com/MediaPortal/MediaPortal-1/tree/EXP-TV-MP-TVE3.5-NET4

This could be interesting for both of you
The aim is to get rid of gentle.net and implement WCF as access layer besides some other changes like threadsafe etc...
As far as I know atm WCF is only used to serve DB results, but that should be changed in the future and would be a great chance to implement the features of MPExtended directly into the TVE, why should we have more than one API?! Maybe you can find a solution that the Whole WCF stuff is modular so that it could be extended easily (I think MPExtended is build in such a way )

Its just an idea and maybe Oxan likes the idea and can contact gibman (I have no clue what gibman thinks about that^^ as I told its just an idea which came to my mind)

 

[Oxan]

Re: AW: Port SlimTv to MPExtended

First of all, first of all we target only stable versions of MP with MPExtended, so probably it won't be until the beta-phase of MP1.3 that it can be used in MPExtended and/or client.

For the TV part, MPExtended doesn't provide any features at all. Almost all methods just convert the data from TVE and returns it, with an occasional workaround some TVE limitation or bug. It's a mere 800 lines of code. The real features of MPExtended are all either in the media part (standard interfaces to all plugins), streaming or in WebMediaPortal.

Also, I don't think total elimination of the MPExtended TV server API is a good thing. Having a single location for configuration (authentication, port, discovery, etc) of all services is a good thing imo. It also keeps compatibility with clients such as Eve, WebMP and aMPdroid (and at least for the last 2 I can say that rewriting the TVE accessing won't be even considered without help from additional developers - we already have way too much to do) which will help adoption of the new TVE.

That said, I think these are good changes in TVE. I'm not really fond of the API (we've some workarounds for its shortcomings in MPExtended) and there are some oddities in connecting with it (takes up to 5 seconds the first time for some reason), and given the halted development of Gentle.net replacing it seems good to me too. I'm just not really sure it's impact on MPExtended is very big.

I'm not really sure about SlimTv, but once it's stable I think it's quite easy to integrate it in SlimTv. The current MPExtended-specific code in SlimTv isn't very long, so it should be easy to adapt that for the new TVE API (which probably looks a lot like the current MPExtended API).

 

[FreakyJ]

AW: Port SlimTv to MPExtended

Thanks for the explanation, it was just an idea coming across my mind

 

[morpheus_xx]

AW: Re: AW: Port SlimTv to MPExtended

That said, I think these are good changes in TVE. I'm not really fond of the API (we've some workarounds for its shortcomings in MPExtended) and there are some oddities in connecting with it (takes up to 5 seconds the first time for some reason)

The 5 seconds delay on startup is an issue of TsReader's OnRequestAudioChange callback: the demuxer asks explicitly for a preferred audio stream, and waits for 5 seconds.

I did choose a stream already, but a former change reintroduced the issue. It's not fixed again:
https://github.com/MediaPortal/MediaPortal-2/commit/4dd54d373e1e903d073fcb837b2372962c628b2d

 

[morpheus_xx]

AW: Port SlimTv to MPExtended

Regarding your patch: I think I will add this as a second provider, so users can choose what connector they want to use. I've build the SlimTV this way for flexibility, so it's a good way to have both connectors

 

[Oxan]

Re: AW: Re: AW: Port SlimTv to MPExtended

The 5 seconds delay on startup is an issue of TsReader's OnRequestAudioChange callback: the demuxer asks explicitly for a preferred audio stream, and waits for 5 seconds.

I did choose a stream already, but a former change reintroduced the issue. It's not fixed again:
https://github.com/MediaPortal/MediaPortal-2/commit/4dd54d373e1e903d073fcb837b2372962c628b2d

Well, that wasn't what I meant: When MPExtended connects to the TVE that sometimes takes up to 10 seconds longer then it takes MP1. It has nothing to do with MP2.

Regarding your patch: I think I will add this as a second provider, so users can choose what connector they want to use. I've build the SlimTV this way for flexibility, so it's a good way to have both connectors

Great! I'm not really sure why someone would want to still use the TV4Home provider though: TV4Home is obsolete, unmaintained and buggy.