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

MCE is really nice but I am partial to Linux...

[garcia]

Unfortunately, we have a large issue with the amount of disk space that the MPEG2 codec consumes. A 15-minute clip of video can take as much as 400MB. MythTV does not perform much better when video is downloaded at high quality, but we have the option to transcode, or re-render the MPEG stream into something a little more versatile. For example, we can compress our cartoon captures down to a lower quality MPEG1 codec without sacrificing much quality; or with a XviD plugin, we can transcode our entire library into MPEG4 in the background. Note that we are using the same Sempron 3100+ processor in both machines!

How well would the transcoding to XViD work when they have sacrificed the CPU to the encoding gods? Wouldn't the machine take a serious hit trying to record and transcode at the same time when they aren't using a hardware encoder?

In this analysis, we are taking video capture from analog cable. We are able to capture digital cable from a digital cable feed as well, but it requires the MCE machine to use a special IR module that actually controls the digital cable box. This can be done with MythTV under LIRC as well.

I have a Tivo and attempted to use the IR modules to control it before caving in and getting the serial control. From what I read the IR control is a pain in the ass and switches channels extremely slowly giving you a lag feel which for some is rather annoying. They don't mention that in this review though.

Of course, on the MythTV machine, we are actually able to skip the commercials entirely. MythTV surpasses MCE completely in this respect. During our tests, 9 out of 10 commercial breaks were skipped flawlessly. ReplayTV's accuracy may be slightly higher than this, but for a free solution, Myth does an excellent job.

This is a minor annoyance for me being a Tivo user. I really wish I could easily do this. FF'ing the commercials is easy and the Tivo does do a good job once you get the hang of it but I would LOVE to see them just gone completely.

From what I can see MCE is really beautiful. You get what you pay for though. I'd love to have the time to play with MythTV (and buy all the hardware) but it seems like you can get the package complete with your DRM'd OS from MS with little pain.

Honestly I am glad that I went w/even less painful option of Tivo but that's me.

Myth install

[JoeNiner]

The biggest problem I remember them having the first time was the Myth (and Linux) install. Then in this review they go with KnoppMyth and gloss over the 20 minute setup...

Re:Myth install

[garcia]

Yeah, they do make it seem trivial to get everything setup with Knoppix Myth as if there is nothing really required from the user to get it going.

From what I understand you still have to install from the CD to the HD in order to get it all setup. It's not exactly like you can pop a KnoppMyth CD into a machine w/a WinTV card and start timeshifting.

You get what you pay for though. If you spend the money on the software you are locked in to what MSFT wants to do (DRM, on demand, etc) but you don't have to spend the time tinkering to get it working.

cost?

[Chuck Bucket]

I looked into this last year, but the holding out point was the cost...it didn't seem to be cheap enough to warrant not buying a Tivo. Still, you wouldn't have to pay the monthy fee (yech!)

Has anyone 'rolled their own' and have a price/features overview? Is it worth it yet?

CBSDFEW@#$%^&*))(

Re:cost?

[squeegee_boy]

Has anyone 'rolled their own' and have a price/features overview? Is it worth it yet?

Well, since I can't get Tivo service at any price (Canada), Myth works better for me. It's cost me well over $1500 so far, but that's for a 3-tuner backend and two frontends. Not too bad for 3 complete computers.

It sure as heck didn't save me any time, but I learned waaay more than I ever wanted to know about video on Linux. You probably won't ever same money on a roll-your-own, but for me and others, money isn't entirely the whole story :)

MythTV

[polecat_redux]

It seems great for cable, but how well does it interface with a satellite-based service such as DirecTV? Since in that case, all tuning is controlled by the receiver, MythTV would be helpless - unless you could wire an IR emitter to it. But even then, the software would still have only passive control over the receiver (what if it goes to change a channel, but the reciever is off?).

Tv guide like CDDB?

[Chuck Bucket]

Is there databases out there operating like CDDB for TV shows? I always thought this is what would (eventually) kill the monthly pay Tivo like services.

That would have the 'wow' factor that would make me start to build one of these MythTV beasts.

PCBVS&D*

Re:Where does freevo fit in?

[iso]

I got MythTV installed OK, but it was after the install that it felt clunky. The interface was laggy, and it didn't seem to have nearly as many features as Freevo + some choice plugins.

When you say "Freevo doenst have nearly the options or hardware support of Myth," what do you mean? I found exactly the opposite, so I may have missed a lot of stuff. If so, I'd like to know what.

Re:Uh-huh...

[Combuchan]

You should be mindful of the codec. The .dvr-ms files that MCE produces are ENORMOUS and you can't do a flippant thing with them. I've searched for recoders but my efforts have been fruitless...maybe they're out there now but I don't care anymore as I have myth working mostly OK now.

With Myth, you can automagically transcode to DivX in the background, and have the ability to store far more video files in the same amount of space. Thus, Myth lets your ass-groove flourish because you're not getting up nearly as much to go to Fry's to buy a new hard drive to store recordings. :P

It should also be noted that the latest MythTV also has direct DVD ripping, and has the live TV in the on-screen guide. KnoppMyth should be incorporating this in the future.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What about the rest?

[LilMikey]

The review adequately covered the TV watching aspects but oddly enough only covered the DVD and CallerID(?) plugins. What about MythGame, MythMusic, MythWeb, MythNews, MythWeather, MythVideo, etc? Does WinMCE have something like these?

The reviewer also seemed to imply that the only way to get an MPEG4 is to record it in the default codec and then transcode it in the background to MPEG4. You can record directly from the card to Mpeg4 (if you have a software based card).

semicolon

[lakeland]

Coming from a UK background, I would have used a semicolon myself. As in:

"Its official; I'm the ..."

But if I were to use something other than a semicolon, I would choose a comma rather than a full stop.

Content, Uninterrupted

[meehawl]

I have a hard time believing the ReplayTV option is much better

Here's the thing... the ReplayTV commercial skip really is that much better. The fact that it's so much better than Tivo is one major reason the TV companies spent so much time suing the various RTV owners but left Tivo untouched.

As it records the RTV monitors the record stream and analyzes for commercial break cues such as fade-outs, fade-ins, sudden increases in volume normalization, stuff like that.

Along with the MPGs it writes, it also writes associated XML info files with chunk sequence information. So during playback, if you decide to "Skip Commercials", then the RTV just jumps right past those ad blocks. You don't even get a notification that they were there. No fiddling with remote buttons. It Just Works.

Well, around 95% of the time it works. For those other times, you can of course hit a manual 30-second skip on the remote, or customize a button for longer skips, or punch in the number of minutes you want to jump ahead. I'd imagine the Tivo is similar.

The fact that the RTV tags the content chunks has some cool applications. The first is that when and if you decide to move the MPGs over the LAN to your PC/Mac/Linux for editing or conversion to DVD or XVid, then with the excellent RTVTools and ReVue you can choose to transcode the entire stream, or just output the commercial-stripped stream. It's a time saver.

The second cool feature is a consequence of tagging the commercials: inverting playbvack to skip all content and play only commercials. I use this for the Superbowl - just play it back on "Content Skip" and you don't have to fast-forward through several hours of tedious homo-eroticism and tight bums but can just sit back and watch all the adverts uninterruped.

And as for hacking your Tivo to add extra disks and network connectivity, then Bravo! But you know all those things come standard with ReplayTV, right, and the network sharing is unencumbered by HMO's clunky DRM?

I would like to see a better review...

[jriskin]

Unfortunately, to do a real review, you would have to 'live with' each solution for at least a week to get a good feel for it.

There are a ton of solutions these days:
SageTV - Windows
SnapStream - Windows
BeyondTV - Windows
MythTV - Linux
MCE - MCE...
Tivo - Linux Dedicated Hardware
ReplayTV - ? Dedicated Hardware
EyeTV - OS X

Now THAT would be a nice roundup. Start with a feature comparison chart, price, compare the look and feel, reliability, benefits, expandability, etc... Then really get in to how living with each system was and how good the support and updates are, since PVR software is changing so rapidly.

Unfortunately, looking at some specs on a web page just doesn't give you a good feel for what you are getting with PVR's.