So this weekend I was kinda bored and was thinking about something productive I can do so I wouldn’t be sitting at home, alone, lonely, and dying from boredom. Well of course some geeky stuff comes to my mind. I was thinking that it would be cool if MythTV, my PVR solution of choice, would have YouTube support. According to MythTVNews, there was no way up until then for YouTube to be integrated. The plugin Mythbrowser doesn’t do Flash, neither can any MythTV software play FLV files.
However, MythTV does provide convenient options to change that, like use a different browser. And suddenly we are in business here.
So… what exactly did I do? Basically I created a two web pages - one is standard HTML using an external Javascript as help, and a PHP file which connects to the API of YouTube. In this case I started off with the Featured list (which is the last 25 videos that have been featured. Ah yes, thanks IBM).
The main page contains div elements which house the information, such as the big image, title and description. The selector image is a simple Photoshop of about 5 minutes, and is controlled by the up and down keys on the keyboard. The script in the back checks where we are, and if the bottom or top is hit, it acts accordingly (probably a real cheesy approach to do that). The list itself on the right side is done with the PHP page and displayed in a borderless iframe element, which in turn is controlled by the Javascript.
I could have taken simple screenshots, but you might not believe me. So I took some photos of my MythTV UI as it is right now, and how the YouTube UI looks like.
Again: The YouTube thing is web-based and not a direct part of MythTV… but it was the only way I think this could be achieved.
The theme in MythTV is called “Pear-ody” and you can get it here.
If you’re interested, I have put up the piece of work for download if you like, so you can extend it or beef it up. GET IT HERE.
Now for the photos!
My MythTV once loaded
YouTube is now available for ya pleasure dude
Featured only - for now
Here at last. YouTube from MythTV. The AppleTV way.
A video playing from my written UI. It works alright…
As a comparison: this is the original YouTube UI as it is on AppleTV machines right now. I think I’m close.
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