PVR's Head-to-Head: MythTV vs. Microsoft MCE

asciimonster writes "AnandTech has completed its second review of set-top box Personal Video Recorders. After checking out the Linux-based MythTV, previously covered here on slashdot, they compared it to Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004. 'Our analysis has proved that though Media Center Edition 2004 is a boxed package that is easy to set up and configure, it looks amazingly beautiful, has great features such as On-Demand content, and is fully supported by Microsoft. However, for the enthusiast, MythTV takes the gold for its greater support for a variety of hardware and software codecs.'"

Comments

Re:cost?

[CyberKnet]

Bear in mind the following:
1) I got the (dual 633mhz PIII) PC with TV-out for free. It isn't *quite* fast enough sometimes. Most (95%) of the time it's fine.
2) I got the TV Tuner cards with hardware MPEG encoders for $50 each... 1/3 the normal price.
3) I traded a laptop hard drive for an ultra quiet Seagate Barracuda V 120GB
4) The other $50 was for an I/R keyboard.

My machine is definitely is not quiet, but it can be done (for more money).
Case wise, a lot of people are happy with the ASUS pundit. A lot just use something painted gloss black.

A few people have reported 802.11g to have enough bandwidth to handle video playback. 802.11b will definitely not cut the mustard. I got rid of my wireless gear after getting MythTV and wired my house up. It is (much) cheaper than getting wireless gear, and now I can copy the 2GB video files off at a decent speed. Wireless (802.11g) was SO slow. And the microwave next door or a cordless phone would kill it.

But yes, MythTV is pretty mature these days... In fact, my hardware let me down before the software did. (old 10GB os drive died).