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I've been using MythTV for a couple of years on Mac Mini (running OSX rather than Linux), talking to an HDHomeRun network tuner connected to a broadcast antenna in my attic. The team has really improved the OSX port in the last few years, with the only lack of Linux parity being in the realm of hardware-accelerated playback.

After dealing with the confusing setup screens and active channel scans, it has worked brilliantly, especially since the 0.24 release. The scheduling software is really good, especially using the web frontend. Watching TV on any computer in the house has been very convenient, and the automatic commercial skipping is pleasant.

Between broadcast and online sources, I get most of what I want to watch, the exceptions being Game of Thrones and some cable-only basketball and hockey broadcasts. The complete, uncompressed HD signals over broadcast TV are perceptibly clearer than HD cable (or, worse, HD satellite) signals, which suffer from the compression.

I use Plex and MythTV (+HDHomeRun tuner) on a Mac Mini. It's been very reliable, and I'm happy with everything I can do, including videoconferencing. My only wish is that I could play MythTV recordings from within Plex, but really the latest version of Myth is pretty nice to use. Oh, and that Myth on OSX would do AC3 sound passthrough.

It's worth noting that I almost never browse the web using this setup any more, because most of the websites with interesting content (Hulu, YouTube, Comedy Central) have already been integrated with Plex.

You can see my setup log here: http://public.boonstra.org/MacMiniHTPCSetup.html

MythTV, especially v0.22, is really an awesome DVR but I agree it doesn't do a great job of providing the rest of the media center experience. I've been happy, though, using Plex media center and Myth on a Mac Mini, which of course has no problem with DVDs. (Blu-ray is a thornier issue).

You can read a little more about my setup and experiences here.

I think the real modern tragedy is the encrypted channels on cable and satellite: no decent HD PVR solution is possible any longer for these media. My solution was to fire the satellite company and go broadcast only.

My experience with configuring Myth was that it was very difficult to do on my Mac Pro (due to a bug in Myth that I think is now fixed). But setting up Mythbuntu (both frontend and backend) on my laptop literally took me only about 15 minutes! If you go with KnoppMyth or Mythbuntu, you can expect a pretty painless configuration process, just by accepting defaults for all but a few obvious screens.

Granted, this was using "easy" hardware in the form of an HDHomeRun, so I had no video capture card to configure. And my experience on the Mac Pro demonstrated to me that if you don't use a dedicated Linux distro, you will have to spend some serious time and effort.

Eventually, I put everything on a Mac Mini (running OSX Leopard) which has been working very nicely.

I set up an SVN snapshot of Myth on a Mac Mini about six months ago. I wanted to save power, so the Mini runs both the backend and the frontend. If you like, you can see a full description of how I did it. (The guide is out of date in the sense that I resolved jumpy playback issues by reducing the priority of commercial-flagging jobs.)

It's been wonderful. I get full HD video and convenient scheduling. I've had exactly zero crashes, and the automatic commercial skipping has been very reliable (maybe one mistake every 5 or 10 shows). I also really enjoy the ability to watch TV on any computer in the house.

Right now, I'm working here and there on integration with Plex because I'd like to have all media in just one interface.

I have previously ranted about the valuation of these options here on Slashdot. I realize that such is not in the Slashdot tradition, but rather than continuing to just rant, I actually spent some time this weekend to do something about the problem.

Since I am a quant, I created a model (released at my public website under the GPL) for pricing employee stock options properly. Or at least more properly than people are doing right now. Much as I dislike working in Excel and VB, I decided they were the way to reach the widest audience of accountants, so the model is in VB and I included an Excel spreadsheet.

Let's hope the accountants find this model and start using it. FASB 123 requests that they use Black-Scholes or a binomial variation. It's time they did it right!

Moderators, I realize it's late in the game for such a post, but I really hope this model or a similar one improves the accounting standards in this country...I could use a little love. Thanks!