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The Hauppauge HD-PVR will record HD (1080i, 720p, 480p) via component video. So You can record whatever your cable box puts out. It is supported in MythTv.

MythTV seems stagnated in development, even with this release, and seems bulky and awkward. Are there any other viable alternatives for home TV boxes/media boxes, that *don't* include a console in any way (xbox media centre, PS3, Wii, etc...)

I'm pretty happy with myth, but you are right, forward progress has slowed. To the point of ridiculousness.

For example, the devs recently refused to accept patches for the support of R5000-modified tuners - tuners which are perfectly legal under the DMCA because they only modify the tuners that do not include access control (if the box has access control, typically 4C on firewire, the company will refuse to make the modification because of the DMCA.)

The reason the devs refused to accept the patches?
Assumption of violation of ToS and DMCA - when neither is the case.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.22

MythTV
New Features

* MythTV UI ported to new MythUI library with all new capabilities
* Added Automatic Prioritization to the scheduler which uses watching behavior to automatically increase priority of shows that are watched close to their recording timeslot over shows that are delayed for longer periods of time. See [16477] for details until the wiki page is populated.
* Added MPEG-2 support for ConvertX/GO7007 tuners in addition to the existing MPEG-4 support. [16538]
* Added new jump point for taking a screenshot and corresponding UPnP web method. [16532]. Network control also has this jumppoint [16613]
* Improved theme caching speed after a "make install" for users who update frequently. [16487]
* Added support for overriding the audio sampling rate in recording profiles on a per card basis. [16747]
* Support for the Hauppauge HD-PVR Component Video Recorder
* Vastly improved channel scanner
* Fanart, Banner, and coverart support in Watch Recordings
* VDPAU Video renderer and decoder for hardware accelerated playback of H.264, MPEG-1/2, WMV, and VC-1.
* Many software deinterlacers are now multithreaded
* New codec and container support from up-to-date ffmpeg libraries.
* Add support for DVB-S2 [21318]
* HDHomeRun multirec support
* Additional Myth Protocol socket functions, including file upload, deletion, and scanning of storage groups. [19979] [21134] [21156]
* Adds a popup dialog accessible from the main menu using MENU which allows the system to be shutdown or rebooted [20852]

EIT

* Fixed encoding for various french Astra 19.2E channels. [16792]
* Various Freesat EIT fixups
* UK EIT fixup - Adds handling of AD, S, SL and W tags in EIT data [20768]
* Fixed matching of programs for updating EIT data

Firewire

* Add Firewire Vendor & Model ID's for PACE STBs [17149]
* Add Motorola DCH-3200 vendor ID
* Add DCT6200 vendor ID
* Add firewire and channel changing support for the DCX3200 model STB [21514]

UPNP

* More exhaustive MIME test [17155]

Setup

* Allows input groups to work properly when each recorder has more than one input and so can be in multiple mutually exclusive input groups. [17172]
* Add commandline scanner [17175] plus many more changesets
* Adds option to mythtv-setup to disable automatic database backup before database upgrades [17479] (ensure you do a manual backup before upgrade if this is enabled)
* Add HD-PVR support [17493]
* Add support for multiple frontends per DVB adaptor [17832]
* Add scanning support for DVB-S2 [21317], [21318]
* Add a spinbox for specifying a value for the "LiveTV Idle Timeout" setting [21378]
* Channel scanner - add option to set off air channels invisble [21691]
* Channel scanner - Allow basic channel scanning with DVB version of HDHomeRun [21858]
* Offer to automatically shutdown backend at start

Did they fix the database encoding in this one?

That depends on what you mean by "fix".

With MythTV 0.22, the database is expected to be configured with the UTF-8 character set. If you're upgrading a database that has been used with a previous version (which required the database to use the latin1 character set), you need to fix your database.

I would guess that if you're using MythTV as packaged by a major distro, by the time your distro delivers 0.22 it will probably handle the character set conversion automatically.

I wasn't aware of any way to do encrypted cable until recently. Now they support Happauge HD-DVR. http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR . Looks like $250 retail or $204 at newegg. A little spendy, but not outrageous.

MythTV 0.22RC2 has VDPAU support. http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.22

If the BBC get their way any receiver with Freeview HD logo will have DRM implemented. If the BBC get their way any receiver using the broadcast SI for EPG will have DRM implemented.

This means that if the BBC get their way all consumer electronics DTT HD receivers will be DRMed and restricted in use of the "FtA" broadcasts.

Of course MythTV will not be restricted although the tables that the BBC is claiming rights over are likely to be similar to the ones for Freesat which have already been reverse engineered for MythTV:
http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/browser/trunk/mythtv/libs/libmythtv/mpeg/freesat_tables.h

BBC is claiming various rights over such information and may bring action against anyone distributing such information.

Hmm, if you have a older PC to run Linux on, you could install MythTV and throw your BT878 card in their. A 1Ghz-ish class computer can compress raw BT878 video into MPEG4 using MythTV. http://www.mythtv.org/

MythTV is my favorite DVR, and is very easy to setup.

There is currently no DVR that requires no monthly fees that has at least some rudimentary capability to acquire the listings.

Moxi
Windows Media Center
Beyond TV
SageTV
MythTV

None of these require any subscription for guide data or functionality, and the top two even have CableCard support so you can enjoy your HD content fix. TiVo Series2 units with DVD burners often come with a free "limited" subscription to TiVo's guide data, lacking the recommendations and ability to look more than three days in to the future IIRC.

MythTV...it takes a bit of patience and effort, but, well worth it in the in and will do what you want.

If you google around a bit, I believe you can find, for sale, MythTV boxes already put together as a turnkey item for you.

Honestly, nvidia's vdpau is the only way to go now for playing hi-def content (like that produced by the HDPVR1212)on anything other than a super high end box. (Seriously, even my quad core2 clocked at 3.2Ghz can't handle high bitrate x264 hi-def), although I've heard there's an experimental ffmpeg branch that can decode across multiple cores.

I battled with my cable company to get them to enable the firewire on my cable box. After a long battle, they did. However only the over-the-air channels were not encrypted. The rest, including the HD channels, were 5C encrypted.

Instead of playing their little game, I purchased a HD PVR from Hauppauge. It's a component (Y,Pb,Pr) input recorder. Now there is no way to block me, except by disabling the component output on the cable box.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR

Some of the G8x are supported but not all.
VDPAU Supported Cards

My only issue is does this VDPAU support in VLC come natively or do I have to do something asinine like compiling the damn thing myself instead of just offering a parallel download (name it VLC-HD or something like that)?

MythTV works for me. It already eats the commercials from the recorded shows, and with simple scripts, I can encode old Star Trek shows onto my iPhone. If you haven't used it recently, I suggest taking a look. MythTV.

How do you use MythTV without breaking the law and without having a tuner/etc in your computer? All of these sites do that quite well.

For over-the-area channels, you can get an hdhomerun and stream the raw transport stream via ethernet. Plays well with MythTV.

IF
they provide the entire current season.

IF
they stop showing comercials.

IF
they make every show on the network available, regardless of ratings

Then I may be interested in paying for Hulu. If not, then back to torrents for me. I already pay for cable, and I have a open source DVR that can record OTA network TV fine.

Not only that.. but there has been a mythtv frontend for the Xbox for almost 10 years.

Shouldn't that count for something in terms of prior art?

Clearly Microsoft was not the first one to think about watching TV and switching between games and different types of media on a game console / general purpose computing platform.

It's staggering that Microsoft would get a patent on something which seems blatantly obvious as the next feature on a TV based console. It's no surprise that they applied for it however.

Obvious, indeed. Isn't there already a ton of such attempt at multi-functional devices already ?

Countless of do-it-yourself, small form factor PCs sitting under the TV set and featuring, TV reception, DVR functions, multimedia player, and console emulators ?
The patent was only filed in 2007. Whereas the mini-ITX format which spawned so much of these home theater PCs dates back 2001.

And building multi-function boxes has so much been a hot topic, that in 2002, a whole 5 years before Microsoft even files a patent, MythTV was named so, because of the "mythical convergence box" able to play TV, browse web, check e-mails, and play games, that everyone was raving about back then. Half a decade before Microsoft even files patents to put TV into an XBox, people were already making such hybrids. (Well except obviously MythGame was initially more about launching Mame/Mess and similar old school games rather than Xbox games as those weren't emulated back then).

From a purely "let's find the oldest prior art" point of view :
- Xbox Media Player and its successor Xbox Media Center and MythTV were all already functioning as "get other medias and TV on your XBox" several years before microsoft even thinks to file a patent for this specific stuff.
- the Nuon platform (started in 1999) was specifically designed to be an official hybrid gaming/movie platform
- Nuon was very probably an attempt at something nice and organised, after numerous not-really-licensed chinese and korean no-name CD or DVD players that featured MegaDrive/Genesis and/or NES emulators for last couple of years of the 90s.
- Consoles from the previous generation as the PlayStation 2 (2000) and the XBox (2001) have been designed to have hybrid DVD-player functionality, either built-in or after paying for an accessory thanks to asinine licensing.
- Consoles from even older or in-between generations like the Playstation (1994), the Saturn (1995) and the Dreamcast (1998) were designed to be able to play VideoCD and SuperVCD either built-in or with an additional co-processor in the case of Saturn. The DC was also designed from the start to be able to check emails and browse the web.
- Sega's GameGear was designed to also work as a portable TV set (with a special cartridge) and Nintendo launched a similar cartridge (ok, the Gameboy's was for FM radio, not for TV, but it's still converging several media into 1 device)
- The consoles which probably spawned all this "combine a console and a media player in the same box" mania : the Pioneer Laser Active. A device that plays LaserDiscs, CDs, but also Megadrive & Mega CD games, and even its own Mega LaserDisc games, and NEC and NEC-CD games (depending on whether the Sega or NEC module was plugged in). And the CD-i playing both movies (although requiring an additional co-processors) and its own format of games.

I think not only the patent is obvious, but there's plenty of prior art in the hacking community to just destroy the patent into oblivion.

It's staggering that Microsoft would get a patent on something which seems blatantly obvious as the next feature on a TV based console. It's no surprise that they applied for it however.

Obvious, indeed. Isn't there already a ton of such attempt at multi-functional devices already ?

Countless of do-it-yourself, small form factor PCs sitting under the TV set and featuring, TV reception, DVR functions, multimedia player, and console emulators ?
The patent was only filed in 2007. Whereas the mini-ITX format which spawned so much of these home theater PCs dates back 2001.

And building multi-function boxes has so much been a hot topic, that in 2002, a whole 5 years before Microsoft even files a patent, MythTV was named so, because of the "mythical convergence box" able to play TV, browse web, check e-mails, and play games, that everyone was raving about back then. Half a decade before Microsoft even files patents to put TV into an XBox, people were already making such hybrids. (Well except obviously MythGame was initially more about launching Mame/Mess and similar old school games rather than Xbox games as those weren't emulated back then).

From a purely "let's find the oldest prior art" point of view :
- Xbox Media Player and its successor Xbox Media Center and MythTV were all already functioning as "get other medias and TV on your XBox" several years before microsoft even thinks to file a patent for this specific stuff.
- the Nuon platform (started in 1999) was specifically designed to be an official hybrid gaming/movie platform
- Nuon was very probably an attempt at something nice and organised, after numerous not-really-licensed chinese and korean no-name CD or DVD players that featured MegaDrive/Genesis and/or NES emulators for last couple of years of the 90s.
- Consoles from the previous generation as the PlayStation 2 (2000) and the XBox (2001) have been designed to have hybrid DVD-player functionality, either built-in or after paying for an accessory thanks to asinine licensing.
- Consoles from even older or in-between generations like the Playstation (1994), the Saturn (1995) and the Dreamcast (1998) were designed to be able to play VideoCD and SuperVCD either built-in or with an additional co-processor in the case of Saturn. The DC was also designed from the start to be able to check emails and browse the web.
- Sega's GameGear was designed to also work as a portable TV set (with a special cartridge) and Nintendo launched a similar cartridge (ok, the Gameboy's was for FM radio, not for TV, but it's still converging several media into 1 device)
- The consoles which probably spawned all this "combine a console and a media player in the same box" mania : the Pioneer Laser Active. A device that plays LaserDiscs, CDs, but also Megadrive & Mega CD games, and even its own Mega LaserDisc games, and NEC and NEC-CD games (depending on whether the Sega or NEC module was plugged in). And the CD-i playing both movies (although requiring an additional co-processors) and its own format of games.

I think not only the patent is obvious, but there's plenty of prior art in the hacking community to just destroy the patent into oblivion.

HD PVR-1212 http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR

I just hope that folks at Mythbuntu can integrate the script that removes commercials. Right now, you must be a semi geek to set this up.

I think you're going to seriously mislead those not familiar with MythTV. MythTV can and does mark commercials in shows (very simply, without using any special scripts) and allows you to skip them automatically while watching those recordings. The commercials are not removed, but rather marked by starting and ending frame. I record all over the air DTV (no cable here except for internet) and watch essentially all my TV from recordings (since I can record up to three shows at a time) in HD with no commercials...sweet.

The script in the link is only for someone who wants to transcode the MythTV recording to another format while honoring a cutlist created from MythTV's commercial flagging, thus perminently editing out the commercials based on those marks. This unfortunately is a very bad idea. While MythTV's commercial flagging is great (near perfect on most U.S. TV for me) it's not perfect...I occasionally have to jump back or temporarily disable auto-skipping to see content that was erroneously skipped. That script would loose that content forever.

Mythbuntu allowed me dodge the expensive DVR and accorded me the freedom to skip commercials from recorded programs. My Mythbuntu, connected to a wireless router, quietly runs in the basement and through a netbook connected to an LCD TV, I watch these shows. Sweet.

I just hope that folks at Mythbuntu can integrate the script that removes commercials. Right now, you must be a semi geek to set this up. The other problem too is the trouble with remote controls. It appears that there is no way of getting a remote control configured without editing some text file. This can be scary with the enormous number of options. Even with this, you will be lucky to have it working.

My experience has been rewarding. To save on power bills, I would like to use a notebook based TV card if I can find one.

For those who might be wondering whether Mythbuntu 9.04 has solved anything, I can say not much over here though boot time is faster with 9.04 as compared to 8.10.

My next task will be to grab free "Free To Air" signals in my area. I understand there are many channels around. This means folks, that I am not very happy with my cable TV company.

Amazing that free software like MythTV can get this right and nobody pays more than $20/yr for the schedule data that makes it work.

Additionally, some Myth users get schedule data for for free. It's called EIT.

A few quick points:

Disclaimer: your mileage, needs and interests may vary.

1) I liked MythTV on Ubuntu which I most recently installed using Mythbuntu. The Xbmc derivatives look nice, but never so compelling I actually used one (because I was already using something I liked).
2) If you plan to use it, consider not fscking with it. Having a TV on the fritz because you tweak the software constantly can sometimes be pretty annoying (maybe mostly to the *other* people).
3) Consider 2 disks. Maybe it's just me, but after a few reinstals/etc I occasionally get sloppy and screw up my partitioning.
4) Keep a hobby PC to play around (if you like to) with and let the HTPC just work TM.
5) If you have a (non-geek) wife, consider not going the home-build route and using a Xbox or something like (which, after 4 or so years is what I use, exclusively) the D-Link DSM-750 (along with a DNLA server like the cross-platform Twonky) this way you end up with a slim, attractive, wireless (803.11n), fanless, HD streaming media device that will allow you to plug your previously computer-bound content (Ogg and MKV included) directly into your HDTV (without having hassle with it).

Of all the solutions I've used this has worked the best for me. But like I said, your ymmv (and I'd be curious to hear about it).

Not quite what you asked for, and I don't know if you can use your coupon (I'm guessing not)... but the HDHomeRun allows you two capture MPEG streams. It integrates well with MythTV. It has an open source library. Pretty sweet little device in my opinion.

I'd be willing to pay money for any program that filters out adds (without making too many mistakes). I've always wondered why this doesn't exist for TV.

Sorry to disappoint you, but you don't need to pay for MythTV. From the features list:

• Completely automatic commercial detection/skipping, with manual correction via an intuitive cutlist editor.

There's probably some better way to do it, but you can edit the kdm configuration where it starts X and add -dpi 129 to the command line...
Is it detecting the DPI incorrectly on your laptop?

You can also specify the DisplaySize in xorg.conf, see here:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Display_Size

X11 will try to work out the physical size of the screen, but some laptop panels don't report the information correctly and so the dpi calculation goes wrong.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/MCE_Remote

Use the box that says "example lircrc config". Although you might want to remap one of the buttons to "stop trolling".

--saint

Pot kettle black. Try reading the text ABOVE said box. Those mappings are for the internal video player. If that doesn't meet your needs (and it's expected that it won't for some people, which is why they let you change it), then that mapping is pretty useless.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/MCE_Remote

Use the box that says "example lircrc config". Although you might want to remap one of the buttons to "stop trolling".

--saint

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_HDTV_Wonder

Instructions fail for 8.10.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_Remote_Wonder_II

Again, instructions fail for 8.10.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_All-in-Wonder_HowTo_(English)

All the page says is "will not work, will not record."

How do you call that "supported"???

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_HDTV_Wonder

Instructions fail for 8.10.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_Remote_Wonder_II

Again, instructions fail for 8.10.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_All-in-Wonder_HowTo_(English)

All the page says is "will not work, will not record."

How do you call that "supported"???

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_HDTV_Wonder

Instructions fail for 8.10.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_Remote_Wonder_II

Again, instructions fail for 8.10.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_All-in-Wonder_HowTo_(English)

All the page says is "will not work, will not record."

How do you call that "supported"???

You're confusing products a bit. The two pieces of Myth that handle non-tv media, MythMusic and MythDVD. These are both plug-ins to Myth and while they do tend to ship with most Myth setups, they are not part of the core MythTV product. I agree with you that they both suck - The UIs and overall management of media are just terrible - But don't poo-poo MythTV because of them. In essence it's like saying Firefox sucks because your Yahoo toolbar has a bad interface.

XBMC is awesome but it's not a replacement for MythTV. It has no mechanism for recording tv shows or hooking to any type of tuner card. What it excels at is, as you said, media management. I modified my MythTV menu to include XBMC, so when I want to watch my DVD ISOs on a Windows box I launch it from the MythTV interface. A quick blurb on how I did it is here.

FWIW, you can add MythTV as a video source in XBMC using the mythtv:// prefix. You can then view recordings as well as live tv, although it was buggy the last time I tried it.

You're confusing products a bit. The two pieces of Myth that handle non-tv media, MythMusic and MythDVD. These are both plug-ins to Myth and while they do tend to ship with most Myth setups, they are not part of the core MythTV product. I agree with you that they both suck - The UIs and overall management of media are just terrible - But don't poo-poo MythTV because of them. In essence it's like saying Firefox sucks because your Yahoo toolbar has a bad interface.

XBMC is awesome but it's not a replacement for MythTV. It has no mechanism for recording tv shows or hooking to any type of tuner card. What it excels at is, as you said, media management. I modified my MythTV menu to include XBMC, so when I want to watch my DVD ISOs on a Windows box I launch it from the MythTV interface. A quick blurb on how I did it is here.

FWIW, you can add MythTV as a video source in XBMC using the mythtv:// prefix. You can then view recordings as well as live tv, although it was buggy the last time I tried it.

1. Do some research on hardware
2. DO NOT USE ATi cards.
   Some people have gotten them to work but support for ATi on Linux is lacking. Before anyone complains about the huge cost of getting a new card, you can get a cheap nVidia (FX5 or higher) for as little as $30.
3. Try it out using a Live CD
   Don't wipe out your system just yet wondering if it will work. Use a live CD and see if it work at all. If it doesn't, you can eject the disc and reboot without any harm to your system. Currently, MythDora, Mythbuntu, and KnoppMyth are the top versions
4. Understand what you want, what you need.
   For basic DVR functionality installing one the previous versions mentioned above is easy enough for most people. To get all the features, you might have to invest in some hardware. To get a networked system, you're going have to know more about Linux. For digital OTA HD TV, you need a digital OTA tuner and a video card with at least DVI out. If you are staying on analog cable and TV, you can get it running on very cheap hardware. Right now using a digital cable tuner is not fully supported as these boxes don't always have API documentation.

Perhaps he's talking about mythtv-setup.

Have you checked the MythTV Wiki for your HDTV card, the MythTV Wiki for your Remote Control, oh yeah and the MythTV Wiki for for Graphics Card? All three are listed on the Wiki, looks quite well supported to me.

Have you checked the MythTV Wiki for your HDTV card, the MythTV Wiki for your Remote Control, oh yeah and the MythTV Wiki for for Graphics Card? All three are listed on the Wiki, looks quite well supported to me.

Have you checked the MythTV Wiki for your HDTV card, the MythTV Wiki for your Remote Control, oh yeah and the MythTV Wiki for for Graphics Card? All three are listed on the Wiki, looks quite well supported to me.

http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures
HTH.

1) My PC based DVR can record encrypted content. Tivo's edge here is gone now.

What hardware/software do you use for this? Something new must have come out recently... As recently as a year ago I was unable to find a legal device that would allow me to record encrypted QAM from my cable connection.

I use a Motorola DCH-3200, provided by Comcast, to handle the decryption. The decrypted signal is sent via firewire to my mythtv box. See the MythTv FireWire page for details.

In the US, FCC regulations require cable operators to provide working firewire decoders to any HD subscriber that asks for one.

For people that might be considering this, because they have no other way to capture QAM encoded video, wait a couple months. The Hauppauge HD PVR records component video as x264, and MythTV is working on support for it. That'll be your analog hole to the bs surrounding QAM and HDCP, so don't settle for this proprietary afterthought.

[...] There are no minor imperfections (bit of snow, slightly fuzzy or ghosting), you either get a perfect reproduction if the error rate is within the error correction's limits or nothing at all. (on/off).

In theory, that's absolutely right. In practice, it's not so clear cut. I'm in Chicago and have been feeding HD signals into Mythtv for a bit over a year with the HDHomerun. I've been feeding SD signals from either cable or satellite into it for over three years.

For about the first eight months of recording HD I was on Comcast, and got eight or nine local OTA channels in QAM off the HDHR. The FCC requires cable operators to carry local digital (icluding HD) chanels unencrypted where they are available locally.

The signal came through very cleanly and the picture was great, but it was clear there had been some compression. At times there were some glitches -- intermittent black screens, pixelization and blockiness, momentary freezes and jumps, etc. I saw all the same glitches at various times with the STB hooked straight up to the TV, so I'm quite sure that Myth didn't create the distortions.

So with cable, it is pretty much a binary proposition -- you get (more or less) exactly what's coming over the line or you get nothing at all.

But for the last five months or so, I've been feeding it OTA signals (ATSC) with rabbit ears. I live in a coach house about seven miles north and four miles west of the center -- where all the TV transmitters are atop the Sears Tower or the Hancock building.

My antenna faces west, and the house has walls built over 100 years ago by people afraid of big fires. As a result, I get at times considerable interference in the signal. When it's good, it's fantastic -- a mile better than the QAM signal from Comcast. But at times I get random characters, freezes, audio pops, etc.

The distortions are noticeably more frequent when it's raining. I've seen the same behavior on other sets around the city.

Most likely, it's because those channels are splitting their wattage between analog and digital transmissions until the switch. The digital transmissions are at hugely lower output levels than their analog equivalents.

There is definitely interference, but unlike poor analog signal, poor digital signal is impossible to watch.

...for MythTV, since the MythTV installation docs recommend against it. I didn't recall this bit of advice when I switched my backend from ext3 to ReiserFS. I suffered through several months of glitchy recordings (many of which were flat-out unwatchable, others of which were merely annoying) before putting out a call for help to mythtv-users. Since switching from ReiserFS to XFS, nearly all of my recording problems went away. (The few that remained may have come from a cable box about to croak, as I had to take it back for a replacement a few weeks ago and I haven't seen any glitchy recordings since I hooked up the replacement. Last week, I had it recording C-SPAN for 6-7 hours at a stretch without so much as a hiccup.)

Did you read the documentation? From http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1
Filesystems
MythTV creates large files, many in excess of 4GB. You must use a 64 or 128 bit filesystem. These will allow you to create large files. Filesystems known to have problems with large files are FAT (all versions), and ReiserFS (versions 3 and 4). Because MythTV creates very large files, a filesystem that does well at deleting large files is important. Numerous benchmarks show that XFS and JFS do very well at this task. You are strongly encouraged to consider one of these for your MythTV filesystem. JFS is the absolute best at deletion, so you may want to try it if XFS gives you problems. MythTV .21 incorporates a "slow delete" feature, which progressively shrinks the file rather than attempting to delete it all at once, so if you're more comfortable with a filesystem such as ext3 (whose delete performance for large files isn't that good) you may use it rather than one of the known-good high-performance file systems. There are other ramifications to using XFS and JFS - neither offer the opportunity to shrink a filesystem; they may only be expanded. NOTE: You must not use ReiserFS v3 for your recordings. You will get corrupted recordings if you do.

More importantly - there's a perfectly good Windows port of the front end now: here (he says without having tried to use it). How much research did the author do?

cable company is REQUIRED by fcc to give customers cable boxes with firewire out.

myth tv can control almost all firewire boxes just fine.

While it is currently true that the FCC has regulations regarding the availability of firewire controllable cable boxes, the regulations do NOT state that the encryption level must be changed. I used a cable box with firewire for two years in MythTV setup. The only channel I received over firewire that was not available via unencrypted QAM was Universal HD, and I'm pretty sure that was a mistake. All the other channels that were encrypted over QAM were still encrypted on firewire.

The only alternative that you have right now is the Hauppauge HD-PVR, which captures analog component and transcodes it to H.264. Of course, this device isn't fully supported yet. It's an exciting future, but not quite there.

Even at the point that where the HD-PVR becomes fully functional, you'll still need to drive it with a cable box.

There is also question about how long the firewire "standard" will remain. At the recent FCC hearing on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, Intel made it very clear that they were pushing for IP based technologies and thought that the firewire standard had failed.

CableCard? SDV? Eh. They all have to have an output **somewhere**, and it would be well worth it for me to buy one of these (in a few months, when Myth really supports them well) in order to have the flexibility to a) save my own HD recordings for as long as I like, b) move them to whatever box I like, and c) upgrade my DVR's storage array whenever I like.

(I currently do this with analog cable, and I'm a big fan. Now I just need some HD lovin'... :)

Back when my cable provider (Charter) first offered their DVR's, I discovered that with 3 adults, all with different viewing tastes, one DVR with it's standard recording capabilities and storage capacity was simply not up to our household's time-shifted viewing appetites.

Attempts to obtain a second DVR, at an additional monthly expense, were solidly refused by Charter. They maintained that their supply of DVR units was limited, and that providing more than one DVR in the same household was not part of their business plan. Not a very smart move, from my viewpoint, when you consider that most satellite services have been offering the option of multiple DVR's for quite some time now. Isn't it wonderful how having an exclusive cable territory allows cable operators to ignore customers wants/needs and adopt a take it or leave it attitude towards the quality of services provided? Oh, well, that's a rant for another day.

Solution to this dilemma?

KnoppMyth http://www.mysettopbox.tv/

I started out small, with one PVR-150 and one frame grabber tuner in the backend, a minimalist frontend, and 80 Gb of storage (2 times the storage on the Charter DVR).

Today my backend supports 3 PVR-150's, the ability to record (paid for) premium channels by using a digital converter feeding directly into one of the PVR's, 3 frontends, and 750Gb of online storage, with an additional 300Gb on a separate NAS for archival storage of my personal DVD collection. All four units have fully supported APC battery backup systems, which protects against data loss here in rural Michigan, where the power can be unstable, even at the best of times. The frontends have replaced the need for stand alone DVD players at each of the 3 viewing stations, and anything that has been recorded can be viewed at anytime by anyone. Additionally, my entire music collection, which is quite extensive, since I am an independent DJ/Karaoke operator, can be accessed from the frontends, mapped into the Knoppmyth backend and stored on the same NAS as the media files.

Being relatively new to LINUX at the beginning, there was a bit of a learning curve, especially as the system evolved into it's current configuration, but there was always a wealth of information on the MythTV website http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page and the KnoppMyth User Forums http://www.knoppmyth.net/phpBB2/

Interestingly enough, Charter subsequently did add the ability to add an additional external USB hard drive to extend the storage capacity of their original DVR, but since it shares it's resources with viewing and recording tasks, it simply lacks the flexibility of the Knoppmyth backend.

Expanding storage costs aside, and using eBay as a bargain outlet for components, the backend unit ran about $250 to bring to it's current state, and each frontend ran $150 or less. After that, the only other expense is the $20/yr subscription fee to Schedules Direct http://www.schedulesdirect.org/ to obtain the needed TV listings data, which is hands down the biggest entertainment bargain you could find anywhere.

Up next, the addition of a slave backend to support a recently acquired HDTV tuner to record unencrypted QAM cable channels, and additional tuners for those rare occasions when I do actually max out the system's recording abilities.

Note: I realize this post is somewhat off topic, since the original posting is about suing Time Warner for the right to use alternative set top boxes, but there are already alternative solutions available, such as MythTV and it's various derivatives, which can obtain virtually any functionality, short of a cable card, that the user desires, and requires no special lawsuit to implement on any current cable operators system.

DaveJ45

http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_HD-PVR

OK, so the driver for MythTV is still in alpha, but I understand it's getting close.