HTSP protocol extensions

[perexg]

I'd like to discuss some extensions to the HTSP protocol:

• move to "large" UUIDs which tvh uses internally - 128-bits (channels, tags, DVR entries)
• EPG events might have 64-bit id numbers instead 32-bit id's in future to avoid 'reuses'
• direct MPEG-TS data transfers
• use htsmsg binary2 format (smaller length) encoding - see current tvh's master - src/htsmsg_binary2.c
• add gzip compression for binary htsmsg - this will help to reduce the MPEG-TS overhead and it's ideal for EPG data transfers

[Jalle19]

Sounds great! What does direct MPEG-TS transfer mean in practice?

[ksooo]

If it is possible to keep master pvr.hts work with both tvh 4.2 (stable) and tvh master, without cluttering pvr.hts code to much, +1 from my end.

[perexg]

The major incompatibilities are 128-bit UUIDs and 64-bit EPG IDs. Currently, TVH manages the 32-bit IDs only for the HTSP protocol. Unfortunately, it means that if I remove support for 32-bit IDs in tvh, the older clients won't work. I probably have to maintain some translation tables for older clients - not a big fun. Anyway, I'd like to put this change ASAP to the code (with upgraded API number) so you can add those changes to next pvr.hts release.

Passing MPEG-TS means that tvh will not change the input data at all (except for transcoding).