Activity
See the WhoIsDoingWhat page to see who in the community is/was working on what projects.
New graphics
Some think the MG35's original graphics are quite ugly, so the main effort was directed to improving the user interface. The resulting GUI looks a lot better. Unfortunately, this has to be revisited on each firmware release, since Altech adds graphic files to the new firmwares.
Support for other codecs
Since the EM85XX GPU runs microcode, it appears to be a custom DSP with generic IDCT, quantization, zooming, etc. It is quite possible that other MPEG-style codecs could be implemented in microcode.
Support for other containers
MKV support in particular, including:
- streamed subtitles
- bookmarking (chapters)
Samba server
To be able to add/remove files to the HDD via ethernet from Windows Explorer.
Roadblock: Samba is fat and ugly. Samba-TNG was apparently ported to an embedded system. Still need to disable huge parts of it though. Investigation continues in contact with Elrond/LKCL.
Update: OpenEM86XX has Samba in it. Toolchain is the same, so it should port pretty easily. Not sure if server is included.
Update2: Unfortunately, the SMBD compiled for ARM takes up a whopping 4MB of code. Well beyond a reasonable target size for our player.
Update3: The new SMBD binary is down to 1MB. Still forks though.
SSH server
This could be a good replacement for telnet.
Dropbear is reported to be a small implementation of an ssh server and an ssh client that together come in around 100k. It has no external dependencies (I.E. it does not depend on OpenSSL, using a built-in copy of LibTomCrypt instead).
For SFTP, another server would also be required (best known implementation is the OpenSSH sftpserver). The advantage is that we could then use something like Sftpdrive (Windows, shareware), MacFUSE (Mac) or SSHFS (Linux) to transfer files to/from MG35.
sshd is built, and working. scp support has yet to be debugged.
Playing streaming video
- Need to get source for a working video player first
Web interface
Moved here.
Ongoing work by Jon Gettler.
Album/DVD cover
- New menu system supports thumbnails. Covert art shouldn't be much of a stretch. JPEG only, since it needs to be in YUV output as quickly as possible.
Support for connecting an ATAPI DVD drive
Support in firmware for:
- directly playing DVD disks (not clear if EM8511LF includes CSS decryption. API is included, further testing needed.)
- dvdbackup, with some form of GUI (Speed???)
- audio CD ripping/encoding
Ed: Where to rip dvd's and audio cd's to? The network? Only one ATA/ATAPI device is supported on the IDE "bus". OKFW has CDDA extraction/player already written. Should be simple to port.
Web browser
- Due to lack of keyboard and mouse (as well as limited screenspace, memory, possibly disk), this will be an interesting project. Since basic requirements for any real web browser include HTML4, EcmaScript, and CSS, it's unclear whether it's even possible.
- Links seems to be a contender.
Delete media files/directories
Application design is now open.
Wake-on-LAN (WOL) support
Update: ether-wake now ported. Shell script to activate from server listing file?
It would be great to be able to remotely start a media server configured for WOL. The list of servers that can be started may be in a text file on the hard drive (it could be the same file used for speeding-up nbtscan).
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Comments (7)
Phillip Hackenberg said
at 3:12 pm on Jan 27, 2009
AC3 Codec support would certainly be nice. I have been having to recode my videos.
Phillip Hackenberg said
at 3:14 pm on Jan 27, 2009
Since I am greedy, would there be a way to go random in a directory rather than having to build a playlist? Maybe an extra icon on the menu would do it.
Phillip Hackenberg said
at 1:31 am on Feb 1, 2009
Hardware mod - SATA drive converter card. I have been looking for one small enough; It seems to me if the tray were chopped a bit that one could be fit in.
Rajesh Singh said
at 9:35 am on Feb 11, 2009
In regards to DVD graphics, ability to download graphics off IMDB or something and convert to use as thumbnails for the films?
How about HD support for HD videos? or is there a memory limitation there with the MediaGate device?
Vasile said
at 11:21 am on Feb 11, 2009
@Phillip: there is a remote command for shuffle music playing, I think it's one of the numeric keys, check the forum or try them all :-).
@ Rajesh: not a memory limitation, but the chipset doesn't support HD decoding. For HD, you can use MG350HD. But I recommend Popcornhour or other NMT device, since they have better support both from the manufacturer(s) and the community.
Bill said
at 7:38 pm on Apr 1, 2009
Hello, I'm new here, I was wondering if a RSS feed reader for podcast and video cast files would be possible.
I have an mg-350hd
Vasile said
at 9:30 pm on Apr 1, 2009
mg35 has a totally different hardware and software then mg350hd. For mg35 there is a rss reader ported by John, but nobody tested it thoroughly. AFAIR, it doesn't have a GUI, it's just a command line tool. As long as enclosures are in a format known to mg35, they should work.
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