Using DRb and ruby to control mplayer and record/playback HDTV. March 14th, 2007
I wanted HDTV broadcast in Ubuntu, so I bought a PC-HDTV 5500 tuner. It needs a 2.6.18 or higher kernel to work.
I’ve been working on some scripts to control my TV. So far I have a rudimentary server and client along with a HDTV record script that uses a direct copy from the device using the linux tool ‘cat’. My system @kernel 2.6.19 had a bug which causes cat to overflow.. So there is error detection and resume recording after a crash.
I’ll be using linux CRON to schedule recordings.
It is a work in progress.
Here is the SVN repository:
http://svn.rubyonlinux.org/mplayerctl/
I used Kazuki Takemura’s code to control mplayer, and extended it to use DRb connections.
Go ahead and comment if you are interested in helping with the project. I want it to become a simpler MythTV style thing eventually.. SIMPLER is better.
New commits, March 2008. Rudimentary recording and scheduling via cron are now possible. Need to improve the actual mplayer part now but it’s working so that’s great.