Practical uses for this stuff

Ok, all of that was interesting and all, but just what can be done with
any of it?  Oh who am I kidding, this is the first page you clicked on.
So lets cut to the chase and examine three lists.  The first is things
that you can probably do right now to make your use of one of these
products more useful.  The second are things that COULD be done based on
what we know.  The last is more blue sky ideas that might be possible.

Things to do:

1.  Enable the USB port on the set.  Photos and MP3 playback are
    safe and practical.  With sufficient care Video playback can
    be safe.

2.  Kill off that stupid two hour shutdown timer.  Seriously, what
    gay Green government regulator mandated that?  Makes the cable
    company's music channels kinda pointless now doesn't it?  Or
    settling in to watch the election returns, etc. Or just connecting
    a cable or sat receiver if you also run the audio through an amp.

3.  Program your universal remote to take advantage of some of the
    extra features available.

4.  Put a TV in your lobby using the Install Menu's Public settings.

5.  Use Virtual Channels to move the local channels from the oddball
    places the Cable Company stuffed them to more useful places on
    the dial.

6.  Hack Linux!  Woot!


Things to work on:

1.  The UI has holes where Channel Labels should go.  There just isn't a
    way to create any.  Should be fixable.  Lots of clues on lg-hack.info
    about dumping and editing the set's config.

2.  Conquering the overscan issues.  The set's firmware doesn't allow
    disabling overscan on any 480i/p content.  Which is bogus, allowing
    it for DVD would be handy.

3.  Get DTS passthough working.  Everything looks like it is there
    in the mad sources, just commented out.  DTS downsampled to
    the internal speakers is another story, doesn't look like all
    of the bits are present for that so onless someone can program
    the DSP to do it that isn't going to happen.

4.  Add a USB Ethernet (or WiFi), BT dongle and BT keyboard/pointer.
    Install a VNC client using them plus the OSD.  Full desktop
    Internet apps for the win!

5.  Figure out how the artwork is packed inside lgres and retheme the crap
    out of these suckers.

6.  Gain access to the raw digital datastream from the tuner.  With
    that PVR functionality is an option even if getting at the
    still unknown functionality in this direction built into
    more recent LG firmware doesn't pan out.  Even better is if
    we can also get at it on sets with CableCards, a raw stream
    from that would be golden!

And sitting on the edge between the possible and the blue sky list:

    My wet dream would be to gain sufficient control to make RELEASE
    simply drop all control of the tuner on command while continuing
    to manage the display, remote, etc..  Then put a new program in the
    unit to run the tuner under command of a network port and appear to
    the world as a HD HomeRun.  Imagine the possibilities there!
    Especially on a set with CableCard.  Hidef for MythTV without the
    analog hole or exposing the Myth devels to lawsuits.

    While this appears impossible without the source to RELEASE, it
    just might be possible since the .o files for RELEASE are out
    in the wild.  Replace all the tuner related blocks with stubs
    that accept any input and return success and blank data.  That
    leaves an otherwise functional set while cutting the tuner
    loose.  We could then link the original binary blobs to control
    the tuner and Conditional Access hardware into our new code.

    Put it probably wouldn't be 'on command' if done that way, it
    would be a more permanent reconfiguration.

Things that might be possible:

1.  Getting automatic aspect selection based on WSS working through
    the analog inputs.  The information rides in with the CC and V-Chip
    data and the set decodes all of that.  But the only references to
    WSS I find in the scaler sources is related to SCART.  Might be
    solvable.  The question is whether it can be solved without
    access to the source for RELEASE.