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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.'"
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.
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...
Mod Me, Bee-yotch!!!
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@#$%^&*))(
free ipod and free gmail!
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?).
AnandTech has completed it's second review
It's official. I'm the last surviving human who knows how to use an apostrophe properly.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
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*
free ipod and free gmail!
It's interesting to head-to-head MythTV and Microsofts WMC as two computer/TV units... but as far as I'm concerned I'm sticking with my TiVo as a unit that runs Linux and does nothing but drive my TV. Afterall, the more computing tasks you give a box, the more likely you are to crash it, and I demand high reliablity from my TV.
...there are alot of problems with this review.
Firstly, they try and compare software encoding offof any old bttv card to hardware encoding on a card like the PVR-250 (which Myth is more than capable of handling adequately). Apples and oranges.
They make almost no mention of the many plugins Myth has available, such as the web browser, RSS syndication, weather, music, every kind of video ever (through mPlayer and/or Xine)...
Almost complete non-mention of the way MythWeb (web-based MythTV control and viewing system) seamlessly integrates with the system, and allows you to do funky things with your Mythbox from work
And they also ignore MythTV's *real* strength in that you can cluster as many computers and TV cards as you want into a single cohesive entertainment system spanning your entire house, thanks to it's funky client/server architecture.
Very little objective/subjective comment on the relative merits of the interfaces
Frankly, I find it rather difficult that they could put an entire Myth system together in little under 4 hours, especially since they seem to know little about Linux (for instance, it is practically impossible to compile MythTV in 20 minutes - it takes aaaaaggggggeeeeessss. Methinks they meant download and install rather than compile).
Most of the review (and screenshots) seems to be spent on drooling over MCE's blue buttons. In short, not a very worthwhile or in-depth comparison IMHO.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
I'm curious to know where Freevo stands in all of this. I installed MythTV and found it to be very clunky. I recently installed Freevo from the debian packages and had it up and running in literally 30 minutes! It seems a lot smoother than MythTV when using it, and it seems to be more extensible. On the downside all of the Freevo setup is done by editing a text file, but I've found it to be more solid than MythTV so far.
Admittedly I only looked at MythTV for about a day on and off. Does anybody here with more experience with MythTV have an opinion of how MythTV and Freevo compare?
I would LOVE to see [commercials] just gone completely ... I am glad that I went w/even less painful option of Tivo but that's me."
It's not too late to renounce your youthful indiscretion and come over to the dark side. ReplayTV, no commercials, no DRM, internet show sharing...
Da Blog
By using Zap2It
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
There's a fair amount of documentation over at mythtv.org, and even more extensive hardware specs (alot of which was written by your truly - please edit it if you disagree!) over at the Myth wiki hardware section http://mythtv.info/moin.cgi/HardWare.
I'm based in the UK so don't know much about HDTV, but IIRC the only HDTV card that'll work under Linux (and Linux only) is available from PCHDTV http://pchdtv.com/
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
If you can get output from your cable/sat device into your Mythbox capture card, then yes it's compatible.
There are instructions on how to get your Mythbox to change channels on your cable/sat box in numerous tutorials all over the web.
KnoppMyth is a good way of getting Myth up and running quickly, although most seasoned Myth users seem to prefer to use a full fledge distro in order to give easier configuration of all those peripheral devices. Gentoo, Debian unstable and FC1/2 are very popular choices.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
...programming guide is implemented similarly in both instances. ...
the feature that puts MCE on top in this screen is the live display on the bottom left.
they must not have used mythtv much, if you enter the programming guide while watching tv, you get a miniature tv display in the corner as well.
No, seriously.
I speak as someone who put together a Myth box. Used a Via Nehamiah chipset, 120GB HDD, CD ROM, Hauppauge 350 PVR card, all in a box the size of one of my programming texts. And running Gentoo (found some really nice Gentoo specific kernel patches and ebuilds).
Total cost was over $700. Biggest problem I had was that the Hauppage 350 drivers were literally months old. Yes, my Myth box kicks much arse. The web interface is slick, there's plug ins to do MP3 and video (and soon DVD IIRC), but for the amount of $$$ and time invested, a TiVo would have been so much easier.
With iDVD and similar software, I really wish there were something for Macintosh even close to MythTV or MCE. The EyeTV reports I have read contend that it is not reliable. The Hauppauge products for Apple get very little attention. The whole state of affairs is disappointing.
Come on people open the damned box! Get online and read (try dealdatabase.com for starters!) How in the world do you claim to read /., be a tech head, and not know that you can hack the CRAP outta a TIVO!
I myself am a huge supporter of Tivo....I have bought quite a few of these lovely boxes :)
I run 2 currently at the house alone!!! But Myth is a much more free system with none of the restrictions that Tivo has. Also there are no FEES like Tivo charges (even their lifetime service is not for a lifetime its for 5 years!!! read the fine print)
And there is nothing inherently more stable about Tivo then Myth. Or have you never seen the Green Screen of death on a Tivo or experienced the power on/power off endless cycle they can get into. Its a computer just like Myth uses. Things will go wrong. At least i can get parts for my Myth....its expensive to get parts for a Tivo.
And if you copying these shows to Video Tape...im gonna have to come slap you. Tape is not perminent media. Go to DVD. I can go through my PC or via the video out to a standalone PVR / DVD writer and the shows are mine forever. Myth doesnt require the jumping through hoops to export the streams. Myth is a better way to do it.
Now 1 cavet .... DTIVO is great cause you dont lose any of the perfect quality. But your stuck with the tiresome exporting and converting to get it out of the DTIVO and into a PC.
Again Myth does this so well its won me over!
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
It doesn't have support for ATI AIW products. Granted, that isn't their fault.
You can compare features, but until you can compare hardware, it's difficult to say which is more functional for the average user.
That said, I'd go with MythTV just to keep from sending cash to Redmond.
Pardon my cynicism, but this isn't totally unlike saying:
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
I fully understand that for other people, other solutions are more appropriate, but I really prefer a dedicated ReplayTV unit right now, especially for the consistency and reliability, not to mention the cool remote, though I may roll my own when I eventually move to HD (there are no Replay HD or Replay+DVD offerings announced, and Tivo's HD is too encumbered out of the box for my needs).
.mpgs or weird versions of mplayer, unlike Tivos, again.
Not to beat a not-dead-yet horse, but ReplayTV recently dumped a lot of their 5040 units for $50 each, or $30 with a special coupon code (the latter seems to have been a mistake that they cancelled quickly). These are previous-generation models that can transfer shows to other Replay units of the same 50xx model line, something Tivo has not been able to do natively, before, and which is unfortunately dropped in the 55xx line. The 50xx line also has the controversial commercial advance feature, which was dropped on the 55xx line for legal reasons(it sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, but is nice when it works). With lifetime activation at $299 (or monthly fees that now vary depending on number of units), that means RTV is still a platform worth comparing against. Especially when you consider third-party tools like DVArchive (java-based!) that exploit the XML interface of the units to copy programs off for safekeeping and later streaming, without any hacking of the box or transcoding of the native
Oh, one more thing: people outside the US have managed to set up their legitimately-subscribed ReplayTVs with another tool called WIRNS (which you can find in AVSForum, to scrape local show listings. I mention this because, even if ReplayTV as a company dies, owners will still have alternatives to keep their schedules from going dark. And a lot of owners are also joining Poopli, a website with the objective of making transfers between Replays easier.
(No, I don't work for anybody making or selling these, nor do I own any of these websites. I'm just an owner of a 50xx that I've bumped up to 200GB with a simple patch-and-swap, very much like a Tivo owner would do. Before I bought my box, I had almost given up on tv entirely. Now, I'm looking forward to my next hard drive upgrade. And I really regret not buying another unit on sale).
Get off my launchpad!
I never could get a good output signal using either a 27" tube or 65" rear projection.
It really put me off of PVRs. But now I do have 3 TiVos which are very popular with everyone in the house...
But does anyone *really* output their PVR (MS or Myth) to an actual TV? (or better yet--modulate it into a housewide video distribution system)?
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.
:P
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.
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.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
So their review, which is nothing more than an opinion about these products, constitutes a proof? Their analysis didn't prove jack, except for the fact that Anandtech thinks a little highly of itself.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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).
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
You could go water cooling or go with an architecture that doesn't need cooling but that will either drive the price up or the CPU power of the system down. Or both.
I'm just curious if the systems they built at the quoted prices would be something you'd want running in the living room 24x7...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Well, 1 appears to be taken care of...
= ATIRemote
= links/MythContentOnWindows or http://winmyth.sourceforge.net/
If you install KnoppMyth, 2 is taken care of (using the ATI Remote) by executing the command 'install_ati_remote' see http://knoppmythwiki.homelinux.org/index.php?page
I already use MythTV to record on a computer sitting in one room, and play video content through a much quieter computer in my entertainment center that I have set up as a front end. If you want to use a Windows box rather than a Linux box as your front end, have a look at http://knoppmythwiki.homelinux.org/index.php?page
I seem to recall there being instructions as well for using an Xbox as a front end, though I have not been looking for those. From one of the Wiki links you can do a search for Xbox if that is of interest to you, or search elsewhere as well.
Have a great weekend.
-Rusty
You never know...
...the only guy working on a linux driver for a MyHD mdp-120 card packed up and went on a Mormon quest until Nov. 2005. http://myhd.sourceforge.net/
Actually it seems to be more like saying:
Of course neither one is really accurate; analogies never are. It depends on what's important to you, in the end. MythTV supports a large set of plugins you'll never find from MS (games, ripping, etc.). Plus it's more fun and hackable, and you can get it prepackaged.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
As I understand it, this may not be entirely true, I don't think that what you are asking for is available.
KnoppMyth can run a front end from the CD, so you don't need to touch the hard drive for watching what has been recorded, but it does not include a back end, so your recordings will have to be on a seprate system.
You can set up a back end system stand alone sitting in the basement, or wherever it is convienent to grab your video feed. Basic specs for a 2 card capture system would be a 1 gig or faster processor, motherboard with 2 pci slots, as much hard drive space as you can afford, and 256 meg of memory. You may be able to do with 128 meg of memroy, but 256 will give you some head room should you decide to expand later.
You can use the same KnoppMyth CD that you are going to use for your front end to build the back end, as you are going to want the software running from the hard disk for that. If you use multiple hard drives you will probably want to learn something about lvm as that is not something that is set up by default.
Hauppauge PVR250 cards are what I recommend as a capture card, and they capture to about 1.1 Gig per half hour of video. (Yes they do go into the back end system.)
The capute cards vary in price but figure around $100 to $150 depending upon who you buy them from.
Hope that helps. Getting the back end running is a geeky experience, so if you are not interested in doing that, then the CD based PVR idea is not going to be much help.
Enjoy
-Rusty
You never know...
I haven't read every single comment yet, but I've read more than half, and UNBELEAVABLY not a single person has mentioned Snapstream's Beyond TV. I've been using this for a while now and it beats the snot out of a TIVO. First, using two PVR250's I can record two things at the same time, and watch a third program from the Library. This is great for Thursday's because Survivor and The Apprentice are on at the same time. You can skip commercials with just 1 button press. Shows can be automatically compressed to WMV format in the background saving TONS of space. Shows can be burned to DVD's if you want to save space (but with 510Gigs it's not a big problem). This is done at a low priority so you don't notice any performance hit. If your CPU cycles are needed for something else the encoder waits until the CPU has more cycles to spare. Channel lineups are provided free from a web server, this means no monthly fees. Shows can be scheduled to be recorded from ANY COMPUTER WITH AN INTERNET CONNECTION. This means if I'm at work watching TV and something comes on TV that I want to record I just type in my Beyond TV server address, click the channel, and click record. This can be done from many wireless phones too. It's easy to upgrade parts if you need to (more space, HDTV capture card, yada yada). Someone mentioned the drawbacks of using an IR emitter to control your box, but most/all serious HTPC users use a serial cable to control their box/dish. Doing it this way is much more stable than using an IR device. And I challenge anyone to watch my TV and notice any quality difference between Beyond TV versus straight cable, or a TIVO. All my shows are recorded at 8Mb/s, but if that's not good enough, PVR250 cards have the ability to record up to 12Mb/s max. Top notch. I'm just really surprised no one has mentioned this software yet. --Jon
MythTV wasted a month of my life (I was somewhat roped into installing it, otherwise I wouldn't get a replacement system for my aging laptop)
Just off the top of my head you need to set up:
- XMLTV grabbing and channel numbering. In the UK this is murderous... I ended up writing a scraper for the NTL EPG called tv_grab_uk_ntl, I'll prolly post it to the xmltv mailing list or summat.
- Dual head X. nVidia makes this easyish if you're happy with XF86Config but running GNOME alongside is absolutely infuriating. It insists on drawing those damn bars on the TV display as well, and Myth needs to be focused to work properly. I still haven't found a solution to this. Not being able to use a desktop alongside is kind of a no-no. This is unforgivable because marking a window Always On Top makes it go above the bars. Why doesn't Myth do this.
- Infra-red is a nightmare. You have to muck about with settings.pro to make it link against lirc (ever heard of autoconf?), and there's no graphical toolkit for it so you have to edit lircrc and restart and try it and edit and restart and... Oh yeah did I mention the keyboard interface is REALLY damn hard to usefully map to a remote control? It doesn't even have an explicit PLAY button ffs!
- Infra red part 2. This isn't so much a problem with MythTV but setting up an infra red blaster to work with a cable box is also a pain. I subscribe to NTL so I bought something called RedEye (google for Pace Redeye) and modified the software that came with it a bit to run as a daemon that listens of a FIFO to avoid the startup delay on the device every time the channel needs to be switched. I shall release that patched version back to the owner too once I've got some time spare.
I think this is more to do with LIRC, but LIRC as it is now really feels like some sort of hobbyist kit (complete with the circuit diagrams for rolling your own IR hardware... I just went with an Irman and Redeye to save the hassle). Some GUI setup tools would really not go amiss.
- PAGES AND PAGES AND PAGES of settings, the defaults for which don't make much sense usually. Here's a suggestion, when in doubt do what TiVo does. The default ffwd/rewind behaviour is unusable, it doesn't remember where you left off watching a programme unless you tell it to (why not?). To name just two problems.
- Weird menu system. The setup menus are split almost arbitrarily between mythfrontend and mythsetup, using the system from a remote is very strange (menu navigation and channel switching seems to collide). There is no warning about scheduling collisions so you always have to check the recording schedule. There's no at-a-glance "season pass" editor, so if you want to cancel a season pass you have to find the next instance of the show. Many many minor niggles like this.
- Inexplicable encoding weirnesses everywhere. It either skips and stutters or records in awful quality (on a 2GHz hyperthreading Xeon with half a GB of memory, which the site claims should be able to record TWO streams in MPEG4 at once AND play one back at the same time). Or you spend ages messing about with the recording profiles to get it just right (would it really be so hard to add a 'PAL/NTSC/VGA/Custom' resolution option instead of having to guess that the encoder will only be happy with 740x578 or whatever the hell it is?). I got frustrated with this and got a Hauppage MPEG2 hardware encoder. After getting IVTV up and running on Linux 2.6 with some oddball patched version it then encoded great... except the A/V then began to drift. Back to another round of messing with the settings then recording another programme to test it then messing with them again. Yes I have messed with all the AV sync settings. Should this REALLY require user intervention?
- NUV format with opaque filenames. WHY? Okay if you have it set up to use RTJPEG/NuppelVideo for realtime encoding then yes I can understand this but why use the container after transcoding when the data is in MPEG4/MP3? I know about mythtranscod
"...The ability to make changes to KnoppMyth after it has already been installed is one quality that it severely lacks. ..."
:-
.."
er.. did they not figure what this meant on VCs 1-6?
Login:
In fact it is *necessary* to login to a Knoppmyth install and type lines starting with "apt-get install...." a lot and make changes in an energetic fashion to get things to work! Like setting any IDE DVD drives and HDD's to use DMA before mplayer will actually play a DVD, If I remember correctly, there are also some libs missing - libcss? or something like that. I also added some "luxuries" like the telnet service, NFS client and ftp server to my protoype box...
"..For example, MCE continues to record even if the program is not open
er.. and did they not grasp the concept of MythTV's ability to split the backend (that does the recording, scheduling etc) from the *frontend* - ie the pretty bit you point the remote at. They can even be on seperate machines with several front ends talking to one backend (and probably vice versa but I've never tried this).
Aprt from these strange glaring gaffs a fair old comparison. Strange they chose Myth over MCE in the end though. I love MythTV, but for most punters, it's just not even close to ready yet - it's not exactly hard to install, but to get it working with a high SAF (Spouse Acceptance Factor) takes some effort, and some trial and error with hardware purchases. MCE is ready to go.
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.
There's also MythPhone
MythFM Radio, MythRecipe
and MythTivo
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?
Da Blog
the analogy of:
...The BMW runs like a dream, works without fault, didn't require any specialist knowledge to set up.
...The kit car, while resulting in a supurb vehicle when finished, took months to build, required a degree in engineering, an assumed knowledge of how to install and use the individual pre-requisite components, and an ongoing desire to tinker under the bonnet to keep it humming along smoothly.
I mean, really... have you looked at the documentation? And that's just about the PRE-REQUISITES!
Geeze!
I looked at that about a year ago.. balked, and looked for an easier option... which I found in MyHTPC... which was a free product (still is), but has been supersceded by the pay-for product called Meedio. Although you can still get your hands on MyHTPC here.
Let's see... what do you have to do there?
* Boot Windows X (I haven't checked how far back it works, but 2000 and XP are fine)
* Run Setup
* Use the point and click configure
Um... you're done.
Gee, that was tough.
Again I say: It's all well and good for there to be these great things out there for Linux, and they're free and wonderfully Open Sourced etc... gotta love that... but as long as the instructions for just getting the thing running are many, many pages long, and expect you to have to run off and do all sorts of other dependancy installs etc... I'm sticking with Windows and free products that have a 'setup.exe' thanks.
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.
Take a look at Meedio.
At the moment it does everything other than PVR functionality (DVD, video, music, pictures, weather etc.), but the TV component is due in the near future. There is a large user base and great community support on their forums.