[Cbe-oss-dev] upcoming multimedia project for PS3

[Lucas Clemente Vella]

This is the concept of a project that I am planning to start, and I come to 
you in seek of advices, suggestions and help.

What do you say?

-- 
Lucas Clemente Vella
lvella at gmail.com
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Super Fast & Compact Multimedia Distribution For Playstation 3
Project Concept

OK, the project needs a better name, but this title summarizes the idea.

I want to watch some videos on my TV, and since I have a computer attached to it (the Playstation 3), nothing better than making it reproduce the videos. The problem is that the native player is very limited compared media players of desktops computers, and does not allows operatins that are common on others media players. Theses are some things I dislike about it:
- Very few formats supported;
- Does not support subtitles on a separated file;
- Does not allow the user to rescale the video, so the borders are not clamped by the CRT TV overscan;
- My Playstation 3 is imported, and, thanks to DRM, I can't watch local DVD's on it.

The obvious solution to my problem would be to install a full featured Linux distribution and use the media player I want. While I would be full of features now, I would lose the simplicity, easy of use and speed of the native player. I think on how difficult was to teach my mother how to play a DivX on PS3 native player. Now I imagine how to tell her that she must watch for 3 minutes those letters going up until the system boots, then attach that keyboard the PS3, log in sitted on the floor, because there is no table near the TV to use the keyboard, then attach the mouse, and finally, find the media player on the menus. Voila!

Well, if you consider, this is not an exaggerated situation. A Linux distribution is not a practical solution to the common video watcher.

The greatest solution to the problem would be a Linux distro (maybe should be called Linux based system, since it is not a distribution in the common sense) that is simple enough to boot almost instantaneously, but complex enough to have all the features you would expect from a full featured media player, including networking, streaming, remote and local file system access.

These are the key aspects of the system:
- Free and Open Source (couldn't be different);
- Extremely fast to boot. The greatest priority is to boot the GUI with what is needed to start a playback from the disc right away. Other things like networking and anything else that possibly takes some time should be done in other threads;
- Should relay only on joystick input for normal operation. Keyboard and mouse should be optional and maybe required only for configuration;
- The interface should be friendly and intuitive;
- Localization supported;
- The boot loader must be graphical and relay on joystick, too. Something like a menu with at least the options of Game OS and media player, with eventually other OS's that may be installed. UPDATE: I just found out petitboot, and it's (almost) exactly what I thought.
- GUI and playback should run over SPEs, leaving PPE to IO and kernel. The idea is to improve speed and responsiveness of GUI right after boot-up. While PPE is concerned with finishing the boot-up process, SPEs are talking to the user and possibly already reproducing a video from hard disk or optical disk.

The system would consist of a minimalist Linux kernel, with a graphical bootloader. If ordinary init is to be used, there should be no scripts. Instead of bash scripts, a natively compiled threaded initializer should be used. It would promptly launch the player's GUI and, behind the scenes, run whatever is needed to be run in order to achieve full functionality. As media player, a modified version of MPlayer could be used. The new GUI for MPlayer could be created over DirectFB, and it could be integrated with playback, with OSD and stuff like that.

The final product would be an action ready "Other OS", easily downloadable, instalable and usable for anyone who is able to read "Open Platform for Playstation 3" ( http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/manual.html ).