[GreatEmerald]

MythTV has a very useful feature - automatic shutdown (or sleep, or whatever other command you tell it to execute) when it's idle. It's very important for power saving, as mythbackend makes sure to put the device to sleep and then wake it up just before it's required (for scheduled recordings). It works correctly when there is no frontend running or when mythfrontend is idling (nothing is being played). However, in XBMC with cmyth, mythbackend never tries to shut down, even if nothing is played. It doesn't even try to turn off when XMBC is started and nothing else happens, even though the machine is clearly idling.

So, is this something that needs to be fixed in cmyth? Or maybe there's some configuration option or other workaround that I'm not aware of?

[GreatEmerald]

I did a bit of debugging and spoke with the MythTV developers, and the issue is caused by the way cmyth connects to mythbackend. If it connects as "Playback", it will block the shutdown schedule. If it connects as "Monitor", then it will not. There's a command that allows changing the mode without reconnecting. So it should be feasible to connect as monitor, then switch to playback when there is actual playback, and switch back to monitor when it's stopped. Mythfrontend, for instance, has a special 'idle mode' that switches the primary link to monitor, to allow the backend to shut down as it sees fit.

So if this could also be implemented in cmyth, it would be highly appreciated.