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Freevo Developers Interviewed
prostoalex writes "O'Reilly's LinuxDevCenter features Freevo, 'a media platform that brings together various applications for video recording and playback.' They interview the developers, and talk about the current plans for the project. Freevo is not just a standalone product, it's a platform to which other developers, interested in home media on Linux, can plug into."
Howard Wen: How does Freevo differ from MythTV?
Dirk Meyer: MythTV uses QT, which uses X. Freevo should also run on a frame buffer, a DXR3 or something else. The next difference is MythTV depends on a MySQL database. Freevo always was a GUI for external programs. There was never the idea to build a TV application like MythTV inside Freevo.
Rob Shortt: MythTV has the live TV time-shifting nailed, and for that I am envious. While Myth has the advantage in [this], I think Freevo does a better job of other media handling.
Freevo tends to be a more nimble program, or I should say "platform." This has to do with us not using a data server like MySQL or depending on Apache for the web interface. Instead, we use a combination of caches, object serialization, XML files, and SQLite for persistent storage, and our own lightweight web server using Twisted.
Aubin Paul: MythTV is exceptional, and I admire much of what they've done. But I don't like some of their design choices. For example, why would I run X-Windows on my TV?
Runnin' On Empty
I've used both for a long time and I currently use Freevo.
Both do a great job at playback on video files. Both have similar features for photos.
Freevo has a better music playback system IMHO. Myth requires an overly complicated two step process of making a playlist using a badly designed menuing system in one screen and then going to another section of Myth to play back your currently selected playlist. With Freevo you have the option of selecting a folder to playback as a complete album or making a playlist. 99% of the time I want the album so this works better for me.
I guess my life isn't random.
Neither is very good at playing DVDs. If you do get DVD playback functioning, the menus will either kinda work or not at all. Don't throw away that $30 DVD player just yet.
Myth has more polish and extra features such as background ripping and VOIP.
The main problem with Myth is the complexity of the application. It uses a MySQL database to hold almost all of its information on movies, music and settings. This makes setup, even on a Debian system very complicated. Using a specialized distro such as Knoppmyth helps, but even the Knoppmyth installer is a bear to get fully functioning.
With Freevo, details about each movie are kept in a single text file located in the directory with the movie. If I move the files around, the data never gets lost. With Myth, losing the database will lose any work you have done entering movie info. I know I could backup the database, but why should I have to? Think Windows registry vs. Unix text configuration files. Why use a database when a simple directory listing will suffice? The developers never heard of KISS, that is certain.
Compared to Freevo, MythTV crashes a lot. IMHO, the overhead of the database and the complexity of C++ make MythTV harder to debug. At one point, one of my Myth installs lost the ability to add more files to the listing. I have quite a few full series on the drives and I wonder if I didn't hit some limit in the software. I finally gave up on Myth at that point and went with Freevo.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to use MythTV. It's the instability and the dread of configuring MythTV that keeps me using Freevo instead.
Freevo is simple and functional.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
I'm the main developer of Freevo. I don't know what you are talking about. We only parse the imdb website and unlike many other projects pulling data from imdb, we have the permission to do so. And you were in contact with us? I can't remeber someone saying something like this and I would never say "I don't care" about such things. And BTW, we don't rely on pulling data from websites, it's only a small add on.