Hi!
First of all I have to thank Klaus and all programmers for this great peace of software!
I use my VDR system since a few years and I am very happy.
But for new users a VDR system (especially with many plugins) may be difficult to use. One way to make the usability more convenient could be a extention of the plugin system.
I guess we are very close to Version 1.4 and so it is time to think about possible improvements for one of the next development steps 1.5, 1.7, ...
Therefore I want to start a discussion on an improved plugin system.
I think of defining more specialized "Input/Output" plugins in addition to the "gereral" plugins. The main goal of these changes would be to make the different types of broadcasts, files and informations transparent to the user. Every type of broadcast or information would be only a channel or a recording. In additon the amount of entries in the main menu would decrease.
Input plugins could handle different types of inputs like video, audio or text "broadcasts" (e.g. streams from another vdr, internet radio stations, video broadcasts, weather information, news feeds,.....). Such a plugin should provide the content similar to common channels. This means if I want to hear an internet radio station with such a plugin system, then I would zap to the appropriate channel in the shedule menu. The necessary configuration could be done in the channels menu. In this case it is as easy to use the various plugins for a particular content as using the core vdr. There would be no difference in watching a "vdr" channel, hearing an internet radio station or looking on a mpeg2 stream generated by a peronal info plugin like the weather plugin. This may include the recording of the content.
The second type of plugins (output plugins) could integrate different types of "players" in the structure and logic of the vdr system. These plugins should implement the ability to play a certain type of files (eg. MP3, OGG, AVI,...) and the ability to identify these files. If an appropriate plugin for a special file is installed, the file would occur in the recordings menu similar to common vdr recordings. This could be also true for DVD, Audio CDs etc. I know most of the functionality is already implemented in different plugins, but this would solve the inconvinience that the user has to manually select a special plugin (menu item) for a certain type of file and then the right file...... For example the great(!) mp plugins implements its own "browser" etc.....
The description above is rather abstract, but I only wanted to explain the major ideas of the possible changes. So we can at first discuss if these behaviour of the vdr is usefull and then we can discuss the technical details.
I could help doing the work. But these changes are rather deep especially for many plugins. So Klaus has to decide if he wants these or similar changes.
What do you think?
Greetings Johannes