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I'm out of the loop these days. I used to have a DirecTivo (series 1) which I'd upgraded the HDD, put a NIC in and could download any shows I wanted to put on CD/DVD. Been a good 4 years since I sold it off.

Since then, I moved to MyhtDora (Fedora + MythTV, with install almost 99% automated). I love it, but I'm out of the loop on what Tivo and Dish have to offer.

Just what is Tivo suing Dish over?

If anyone knows both MythTV and Tivo, what features does Tivo have that I can't do on my MythTV box (for virtually free, other than the Schedules Direct $20/year listing fee)?

Updating Mythdora 4.0 to use SchedulesDirect
Updating MythTV to use SchedulesDirect

I apologize if you thought I was picking on Joe Six Pack. My point is that the hardware is up to the task, but the bloated, slow, and inefficient software grinds down the performance of the machine. I base this on personal experience and run a MythDora (MythTV + Fedora Linux) media center on a Pentium III without any performance issues. It happily plays and records TV, burns DVDs, shows pictures, plays games, plays/rips DVDs, transcodes video, surfs RSS feeds, streams video and audio without any performance problems.

The modern hardware we have is very powerful in terms of computing power. It is the bloated software like Vista/Java/.NET which make your shiny new machine feel slooooow. If we could get the DirectX guys and the Linux kernel guys together, we could have a killer O/S.

MythTV already comes preconfigured with at least two Linux distributions:

MythDora (Fedora-based)
KnoppMyth (Debian-based)

I have a friend who recently setup a PVR and he used MythDora http://g-ding.tv/. It is basically Fedora Core with all of the MythTV stuff already setup and configured. All you do is literally install the OS and you are reading to go.

After And I set up the server, I then got an even older 450 MHZ PC with barely enough RAM, and made a front end out of it. Again, that didn't work well, but a cheap Nvidia card took care of that AND gave me Svideo out so I could run a monitor and a TV as a second monitor (dual screen) at the same time. I then forced MythTV to run on the TV and got TV plus internet. It was only jerky if I did too much internet or whatever on the PC while watching TV. You do have to watch what window has focus, if you want to do some control to MythTV, but you get used to alt-tab etc.

Because that worked so very well, at only the cost of 2 cards, I replaced the front end machine with a new 3200+ AMD socket 754 MB and chip at a little over $100. I had the case and everything else already. I also just took the 450 MHZ frontend and put it in another room, still on the MythTV network.

The new AMD system is a dream. I run TV, internet, Openofffice.org, VNC to other machines, XP in a VMWare session, and much more. And performance is never a problem.

MythTV is OTA, and there are plenty of stations, ABC NBC CBS PBS etc all have mutiple channels each. Fox goes HD next year, but I can record all of these SDTV using power search (record a show anytime it finds it by name, don't record dups and reruns, and skip commericals.

nice.

Still running on the 600 MHZ backend, but I am planning to upscale to a higher end AMD and plenty of RAM and 1.5 TB of Hard disk. This will be my main server for whatever purpose, including VMWare etc. Oh, and 4 or 5 HDTV cards, plus the SDTV cards while there is still SDTV.

Really, this is the coolest thing for OTA TV.

Distribution used: MythDora http://g-ding.tv/, which is Fedora Core 5 and MythTV plus add-ons and on one install DVD. Also nice. FC6 would have been better, but this will do fine.

It was mentioned here a few weeks ago, but I'll mention it again.

Mythdora

The latest release is pretty good, it sets up Myth for you and LIRC and can be configured as either a frontend, a backend server, or a combined system. In fact the other day when my XP pro installation started freaking out, I powered down, swapped the hard drive over to the Mythdora install (removable trays), and carried on watching the tv program. I would have Mythdora as the tv system full time except that my tv cards IR receiver isn't supported by LIRC. I have a generic serial receiver on order, and then bye bye XP ! For anybody with Hauppauge TV cards and remotes (as an example), it should work out of the box.

I will still have a few requirements for a windows box, but vmware will take up the slack from then on.

Check out MythDora It will probably be several weeks before it's up to MythTV 0.20, but Dennis and his friends make a sweet ISO of Fedora Core combined with MythTV that uses a menu-driven installation system. It allows you to configure front-end and back-end nodes separately, too. If you've ever tried to download and build MythTV from scratch before, you'll definitely appreciate it.

Also Mythdora
(MythTV on top of FC4)

I recommend MythDora, from the web site http://g-ding.tv/ :
"MythDora is a Fedora Core and MythTV "All-In-One" CD. The CD will load a preconfigured Fedora Core 4 installation on your computer as well as install and configure MythTV-0.19"

knoppmyth as previously mentioned... also a Fedora Core version MythDora is cool new addition...

Jarrod wilson's mythtv fedora core guide is one of the better/easiest to follow if you want to roll mythtv by hand (as opposed to knoppmyth/mythdora installation)

in addition to the excellent knoppmyth mentioned previously... MythDora FC3 MythTV tailored distro.

MythDora makes a MythTV install very easy.

mythdora is another MythTV distro as well.