Is there a way to control this software using RS232 or telnetd? I am a crestron programmer and I am trying to integrate the unit into a home theater.

Should be possible, what you'd need to do is set up an lircd look alike that reads characters from the serial port. You might even be able to do it via some lirc config...

How about getting real data back from the serial port like program information or current play position, what part of the code deals with displayed strings?

You could probably screen scrape the web interface for most stuff like that. Or you could use ssh and the mysql command line client to query the DB...

BTW - These question could probably get better answers in the MythTV Users or Dev mailing lists... See the archives at: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/

Yeah, SSH would work, there is a crestron SSH client that can issue commands to a terminal daemon. That will do nicely. Thank you!

I'm not sure you can get the position like that without a fairly nasty hack, say setting a bookmark using the command interface then fetching that from the DB. I'd also bet that there's an ugly race condition involved...

Hmmm... It just occured to m that you mean position in the menu system... That could be close to impossible...