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."

Comments

Windows version?

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

The first release, in May 2002, consisted only of a blue screen

So they made a Windows version first?

Re:Windows version?

[Keebler71]

I know that was a joke but Windows users do have an excellent option available in Media Portal. It is a very good open source rip-off of the Windows Media Center Edition functions.

This will never take off.

[bigtallmofo]

This product will never become popular until the authors implement some solid digital rights management. Several studies funded by the RIAA and MPAA conclusively prove that users want DRM in every piece of software and hardware that is made today.

I'm afraid without such restrictions on them, users just won't want to use such software because nobody wants free and unfettered access to equipment and software they purchase.

Re:This will never take off.

[Stevyn]

Informative? I think the parent was joking.

I think DRM is going to slip itself in to many aspects of downloading/playing songs and movies without people complaining about it. This is because your average customer of this software and equipment doesn't realize exactly what it can do. I think there is going to be a backlash when people figure out that all DRM means to them is the inability to play a media file. I'm still waiting to hear about an actual feature or benefit this gives to the end user.

Re:This will never take off.

[EpsCylonB]

This is because your average customer of this software and equipment doesn't realize exactly what it can do. I think there is going to be a backlash when people figure out that all DRM means to them is the inability to play a media file. I'm still waiting to hear about an actual feature or benefit this gives to the end user.

I'm probably just rehashing what has been said before but it is difficult to see how digital piracy can be eliminated.

The only way is for music and video to be safe digitally is if non drm formats don't exist. As long as they do it will always be trivial to convert between the two. Even if the conversion process is difficult, you only need to do it once.

I have faith that as long as non drm formats are legal consumers will (after trial and error) favour the format that "just works" and never causes any hassles.

Perfect question for the first PVR box builder

[2MuchC0ffeeMan]

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?

Re:Perfect question for the first PVR box builder

[BillyBlaze]

One minor nitpick I'd make their - Qt doesn't necessarily use X - it usually does, but it can also run on the framebuffer, or embedded devices, or Windows. (Of course, so can SDL).

I've actually been planning to give Freevo a try - primarily because mythbackend has a habit of dying on me, and a few other quirks.

Freevo vs. MythTV

[Anonymous Coward]

I am considering building a Linux "Media Center" PC soon and one reason I like Freevo more than MythTV is that for the most part it is written in Python. It seems that Freevo would be far easier to modify and write plugins for than Myth (which mostly written in C). Even the creators of Freevo claim they did not know Python before they started.

Re:Freevo vs. MythTV

[avidday]

Freevo is "lighter", more modular and more customisable. The MythTV developers really have time shifting sorted out well. On the other hand running MythTV means running X11, using a MySQL server for recording and listing management and Apache if you want a webserver from end for it. Freevo does the same thing with three python apps that sit over SDL, XMLtv/PySQLlite and the twisted framework. I have tried both and I like Freevo better - the flexibility it affords is a big plus.

Re:Freevo vs. MythTV

[2MuchC0ffeeMan]

Mythtv, only because of Jarod's HOWTO:

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php

Re:Freevo vs. MythTV

[bljohnson0]

Depends on what you want to do. If you want a media center to handle video and audio files then Freevo sounds like a good solution.

But for me.. sorry.. Freevo is useless. If they're going to play off the "TiVo" name by calling it Freevo it should be able to handle timeshifting of live TV.

If I cant pause/rewind/fast-fwd live TV then I'm not touching it. If they ever figure out how to add that functionality then I'll take a look. They're currently "working on it" but they've been doing that since I looked into it a year ago.

Re:Freevo vs. MythTV

[Cthefuture]

It seems that Freevo would be far easier to modify and write plugins for than Myth (which mostly written in C).

Probably, Myth is written mostly in C++ though. The code is a horrible hack job though. Written by a college student. Not that all college student projects suck, it's just that usually the inexperienced create poor designs initially.

Even the creators of Freevo claim they did not know Python before they started.

This is not a good thing either. Same problem as above.

Overall, MythTV looks a lot better and has more features because more people have been working on it. The code is often buggy and hard to hack on. However, it does work resonably well and I've been happily using MythTV for over a year with no major issues.

Re:Freevo vs. MythTV

[DavidNWelton]

The original Tivo was done with a lot of Tcl scripts, probably with a healthy dose of C integration (which is very easy with Tcl). The point being, that yes, using scripting..errr..dynamic programming languages improves flexibility, and if you plan carefully (doing the right bits in C), won't even impact performance much.

Re:Freevo vs. MythTV

[FullCircle]

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.

Re:Freevo vs. MythTV

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I have to disagree with this. First of all, neither one plays DVDs directly, they both rely on an external program. The default player for both is probably still mplayer, which as you say, does not do DVD menus. But if you tell them to use Xine for DVDs instead, as most people do, DVD menus work flawlessly.

Some people also use Ogle instead of Xine or mplayer, but although I know Ogle also supports menus, I haven't used it and am not sure how well it supports them.

Compared to Freevo, MythTV crashes a lot.

I've been using MythTV for about a month, and it's never crashed.

But neither did Freevo in the week I used it before I tried MythTV.

comment id = elite!

[Anonymous Coward]

by Anonymous Cowherd X (850136) on Saturday January 29, @09:31AM ( #11513371)

Check out that number: I-is-leet-1! Dude, are you one of the editors??? This can't be a coincidence!?

What about MythTV?

[laird]

I'm amazed that they wrote up the Freevo project without even mentioning the MythTV project, which is far more mature (i.e. dues more, works a lot better, has more users and developers). Aside from doing more and working better, MythTV has a nice, scalable architecture that allows you to have multiple back-ends (storage and video encoding) and multiple front-ends (control and playback) so that you can have (for example) a big MythTV back-end in the basement with tons of storage and a couple of tuner cards, and have lightweight MythTV front-ends (which can run on an X-Box (for example, see http://www.killefiz.de/k/machines/xbox-mythtv-fron tend/) or a Mac. And since mythtv is available via apt-get install mythtv-suite it's really easy to set up and play around with on any Linux box. The latest version adds MythPhone, which is a fun way to play around with voice over IP and videophones. I'll admit that I spend more time in MythGame (runs all MAME games, etc.).

From trying both projects, the only interesting thing about Freevo is that the front-end is written in Python, which is a nice language but is slow, while MythTV is written in C++, which is an annoying language but is fast.

Re:What about MythTV?

[spencerogden]

I read the article yesterday, and the do mention MythTV. I haven't used either system much, but I do know that Freevo is also easy to install.

The developers say that on one hand, they dislike the reliance of MythTV on X, on the other, they envy MythTV Broadcast Pause feature, something they are still trying to get right.

Now maybe their fear of X is as uncalled for as people who say X makes the desktop slow, but they are aware that MythTV has more features. In all Freevo seems to follow the Unix tradition of assembling small, seperate tools into a loose mass, which is often hard to get right at first than a more monolithic approach.

Re:What about MythTV?

[isolationism]

The reply above covers most of the points, but not all. When you say "MythTV does more" you might quantify that -- It does more with television viewing. MythTV is nearly (if not completely) useless for watching movies, listening to music, or looking at image media -- all things that Freevo does very well, which is all I, and a number of other Freevo users, employ it for.

Re:What about MythTV?

[Gregg M]

MythTV is nearly (if not completely) useless for watching movies, listening to music, or looking at image media -- all things that Freevo does very well

I saw a lot more than a Tivo clone at the MythTV website.

• Rip, categorize, play, and visualize MP3/Ogg/FLAC/CD Audio files. (FLAC, Vorbis, and MP3 encoding). Create complex playlists (and playlists containing playlists) through a simple UI.
• An emulator frontend. (MAME, NES, SNES, generic PC games)
• An image viewer/slideshow application.
• A weather module.
• A generic video player module, with automatic metadata lookups.
• A DVD player / ripper module. Make perfect backups, or transcode down to smaller file sizes.
• An RSS news feed reader module.

How well MythTV performs these tasks is up to someone else to say. But looks like a lot is covered here.

Xbox version ?

[Paolo63]

I know there is Xbox Media Center http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/ but i'd like to have something (easier for me) in Python like this to work on and not something depending on the copyrighted Xbox library... Linux can run on an Xbox, can Freevo too ?

this is all nice but

[treat]

All this linux machine as a DVR stuff is great, except that I can't seem to find a video card that will work with my TV. I just want to display 1080i and 720p without any pieces of the image cut off. I have a nVidia card with DVI outputs that I can't find any information on how to configure correctly with my TV. I would buy a new card if I know it will work flawlessly, but no one seems to have information on what cards are good, or how to get the timings to configure X.

Re:this is all nice but

[stoneymonster]

I suggest you check out mysettopbox.tv (knoppmyth's home page). Their forums have lots of knowledgable people who have done just this. You might also search the mythtv-users group (available in archive or in a nicer threaded format on gossamer-threads.com). There are people there who have helped a bunch of others getting the correct X modelines, etc. Good luck! -C

Re:this is all nice but

[buck68]

My advice, if you want to try DVI to your TV, that's fine. But if you don't get satisfactory results initially, don't waste any more time. After huge amounts of research, I found out that my TV (a 30" Widescreen CRT by Toshiba) is basically impossible to get working (beyond 640x480) with DVI from a computer.
I think the same is true of many TVs. The path of least resistance lies with VGA to component adaptors like the Audio Authority VGA to Component (Y-Pb-Pr) Transcoder (Model 9A60). The 9A60 is a bit pricy, but it was well worth it for me. My theory is that the component input (Y-Pb-Pr) circuitry in TVs is often much more flexible than their DVI interfaces.

As for quality. The VGA route gives you perfectly clean text and menus, pretty much like you are used to on a proper monitor. Video quality is another matter. My set is HDTV capbable, but I don't feel the cost of HDTV where I live is acceptable. So my video quality benchmark is DVD quality. On my TV, watching a DVD via MythTV (actually xine) on my computer is indistinguishable from watching the same DVD via my progressive scan player (also made by Toshiba).

I've researched this a lot, and the only other option I'm still curious about is using an Xbox for the front end. The Xbox can do Y-Pr-Pb directly, and the linux Xbox claim to have it working. My main concern is that the CPU may not be powerful enough in some cases. For example, some of my cable channels are of truly horrible quality (Shaw cable in BC). I use the MythTV feature that transcodes video to compact MPEG-4. This space savings substantial, but the quality on the poor channels is what I'd call VHS level (occassionally much worse). There are playback postprocessing filters that can help this, but they seem to need a lot of CPU.

Good alternative?

[Nik13]

Not that I've played with either (my HTPC has always been running on windows), but this sounds like a good alternative to us all using DVB captures instead of crappy analog captures (once you try DVB capturing, you never want to go back). Sounds like this could go nicely with VDR (unless VDR already has those kinds of things in it already?). It seems that the only kind of digital capturing that any companies are interested into is for OTA HDTV, but it would be nice to have something for digital cable or satellite (well, we already have DVB-S covered). For once, microsoft might be the only ones with enough money and power to convince big media companies to let them record the decrypted digital signal directly, as long as they use their DRM. At least you'd have good quality timeshifted/recorded shows, but that's never gonna happen. In some PVR software reviews, I remember seeing them mentionning how they've designed it to accomodate for things like rabbit ears (and analog cable). Here, everybody I know has either satellite or digital cable (probably twice as many with satellite).

Mac Mini

[zhenga]

Has anyone tried Freevo on OSX?

Re:Mac Mini

[geckofiend]

Myth runs under OSX. Current CVS (soon to be release .17) compiles clean for OSX out of the box.

Qt Embedded

[Andy Dodd]

It is possible to install Myth without X. It's a bit of a PITA nowadays, but it can be done.

Now relying purely on framebuffer, on the other hand... BAD IDEA. Ditching X means ditching hardware scaling, hardware IDCT, and hardware motion compensation, critical to:
a) Running a frontend on a slower system
b) Viewing HDTV at all. It's a pain without hardware MoComp and IDCT, but there's no way in hell you're going to do it with software scaling.

Freevo is leech-ware

[Anonymous Coward]

Freevo's operation relies on scraping content off third-party websites without permission. Not only is this a dubious practice from a legal and ethical point of view, it's a bad long-term strategy. Should Freevo become popular, then the owners of the content that Freevo lifts will either take steps to cut off Freevo access, or will disappear because their business model is being subverted.

I've been in contact with some of the authors of the Freevo project regarding this issue; their attitude seems to be "we are able to do it, therefore we will." What about should? Is it a good idea to bite the hands that feed you?

Re:Freevo is leech-ware

[Dischi]

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.

What HW to use

[aagha]

I've been thinking of putting either a MythTV or Freevo box together for some time. However, before starting out, I want to find some decent HW that won't bankrupt me. A friend of mine reccomended an ASUS Pundit box, but I'm wondering what others have found? Anything cheaper or smaller?