wiki:TaskBrowserBasedSetup

Browser Based Setup

Page to document the design and implementation of Browser Based Setup

Requirements

  • Replace Existing mythtv-setup
  • All backend setup to be done via a web browser connection to the backend.
  • Enumerate and autodetect tuners/available inputs to the best of our ability.
  • Enumerate and present only existing network interfaces.
  • Simplify setup of slave backends with sanity checking of IP address setup
  • Do not permit a misconfigured backend. Add enough sanity checking that the resulting product is functional, even if not perfectly configured.
  • Present only relevant options/modulations/frequency tables to the hardware and locale in the scanner
  • Validate all input, require that each step is successfully completed/configured before moving on to the next.
  • If advanced options are to be presented at all, they should be kept in an advanced pane-- dev nodes, etc. should be invisible to the average user since they are unnecessary to anyone not overriding the information
  • Track reassignment of dev nodes on system restart if possible-- store a "fingerprint" of tuner information to track changes (serial number when available, PCI ID when not, vendor/name/etc. when all else fails)

Design

General

  • IP Addresses to be selected from a simple dropdown. If address is non-loopback, add a "Make this backend the master" button/checkbox.
  • Simplify slave backend setup with a simple checkbox or by detecting existing backends and offering a simple option to add this backend to the existing setup.

Scanning Profiles (stuarta)

The intention of this is to make setup easier by allowing the user to describe their setup to MythTV in a less technical way. For example, they have a dvb-s card which is pointing to the FreeSat? satellite group.

  • Simplify scanner setup by providing scanning profiles. Using our example above, the user adds a dvb-s card, and tells us it's pointing to FreeSat?. From this the scanner then has all the information it needs to go and find the channels.

Capture Card Setup

  • Autodetect all attached cards.
  • Allow for dynamic adding and removal of capture cards with a running backend.
  • Hide DiSEqC options for incapable devices.

Video Sources

  • Support the XMLTV configuration API. The API allows this config to be done in the browser (or other UI). This is preferable to redirecting the user to a shell for interactive configuration of xmltv e.g. channel selection.
  • Allow users to select a subset of channels from a larger set. For example, in the United States, CATV companies have created three tiers of service. "Analog", where the channels go from 1 to 25 or so. Can be tuned using a standard NTSC analog tuner. "DTA" - Digital Terminal Adapter. Analog (typically baseband) output, can tune channels 1 through 125. "Digital", a full set-top-box, which can tune channels 1 to 9999. Typically has high-def outputs. "DTA" is a subset of "Digital", but there is no easy way for the user to remove channels above 125 and apply the resulting lineup only to encoder cards which are connected to a DTA.

Channel Scanner/Input? Connections

  • If we have only one video source, we don't need to even ask the user to manually map the card to source. This step can be skipped.
  • Display names can be arrived at automatically by taking the video source name and appending an incremented number, e.g. Freeview 1, Freeview 2.

Channel Editor/Icon? Download

  • Do not allow frequencies/mplexid/etc. to be edited outside of the functional range of the device.
  • Allow filtering by a range of criteria including service providers (DVB). This would take some of the pain out of hiding the unwanted channels (shopping/adult channels) from satellite lineups with hundreds of channels. See Kaffeine for an example.
  • Integrate with SD website to auto-setup new accounts?

Storage Group Setup

  • Do not permit assignment of directories to a storage group if the backend user does not have permissions to read and write to them.
  • Do not permit assignment of directories that currently exist as the root of a mount.
Last modified 13 years ago Last modified on Jan 9, 2011, 6:32:11 AM