MythTV 0.17 Released

foobar01 writes "MythTV 0.17 has been released. Changes include Mac OS X frontend support, big improvements to DVB and HDTV support, "timestretch" feature (for changing playback speed but not the pitch so you can watch shows more quickly), firewire capture support for cable boxes with firewire output, and widescreen user interface support. See the changelog for the full list of changes."

Comments

Re:timestretch?

[Bohnanza]

The audio IS "speeded up", but the pitch remains the same. This is fairly easy to do with digital audio.

Totally changes the way you watch TV

[PsychoKiller]

I just got my MythTV system running 2 weeks ago. I'm still running 0.16 but it's still great.

I'm using a Pundit-R that sits beside my TV, and it uses a 802.11b wireless card to get programming data.

Since I've been using it for 2 weeks, it's totally changed the way the wife and I watch TV. We never miss an episode of our favourite shows, and never watch commercials.

The commercial marking function is like magic, it looks for blank frames in the data stream and flags that as a commercial. I'd say it gets it right 80% of the time, 15% of the time it will include the station ID clip, and 5% it will grab an extra commercial, but I'll just hit forward on the remote to skip it.

My favourite part is using it to watch a new show that's 'almost' live. I'll set it to record the show, but then start watching it 5-10 minutes after it's started. When I get to the commercials I skip over them, and by the end of the show I'll have hopefully synced up perfectly with the real time stream.

Re:Why Apple?

[xenocide2]

Because some time ago, /. started putting stories in more than one category. For example, this story is in Linux, Apple and what appears to be Television. The only thing the OSX program can't do yet is record; it would be interesting to see a OSX backend that used iCal or something to record shows.

Re:Is there a good mythtv live cd?

[prowley]

Knoppmyth is the whole shebang. I based my dedicated install on it. http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html

Re:Mac Mini Frontend

[interiot]

From what I've heard, the horsepower requirements for decoding HDTV are:

• 480p - XBox Media Center
• 708p - Mac Mini
• 1080i - x86 >2.8GHz, or equivalent

So, the Mac Mini may not be enough in all cases, right?

Re:Is there a good mythtv live cd?

[masonjd]

If you are referring to KnoppMyth then it also installs the backend. You can use the cd to just install the frontend but it will install the both pieces on one computer. That is the way I have done it.

KnoppMyth definitely makes MythTV more accessible. The entire install and configuration takes about 20 minutes provided that you are using linux compatible hardware. Pretty much if you are using a Hauppauge card then you are set.

Re:HDTV.

[null etc.]

My understanding is that having an HDTV tuner card doesn't get you anything in terms of the broadcast flag, unless you happen to get one that ignores the broadcast flag, which either are or shortly will be illegal to purchase.

The answer to this at EFF:

"As EFF describes on our Digital Television Liberation page, recent regulations in the United States will ban the manufacture of DTV-receiving hardware described here after July 1, 2005. While we challenge these regulations in court, the clock is ticking, and it's safest to assume that it will be difficult to get unrestricted DTV receiving equipment in the future the way you can today.

However, despite the manufacturing ban, existing equipment will continue to work (and to be lawful to possess and operate); it will be immune from the restrictions imposed on future equipment. That means that the equipment you can buy today is more functional and more useful than what you may be able to buy after July 1, 2005."

Re:HDTV capture devices which ignore broadcast fla

[interiot]

Visit the EFF broadcast flag page, scroll down about halfway, and look under the Linux/Windows/Mac sections on the left.

...for some definitions of fairly easy

[fireboy1919]

If by "fairly easy" you mean "there are existing algorithms that do this badly," then you're right.

If you mean "sounds exactly the same, only faster" then you're wrong. Considering the quality of these things now, I'm not sure I wouldn't rather just let the pitch raise.

The problem is how to represent pitch. Most of the time, this is done by converting to a frequency domain and doing a shift, or by convolving the signal with a waveform that causes a signal shift (the classical example of this is using a sine wave, as is done for RF encoding). The problem is that this technique is only really good for a signal that doesn't change over time.

In fact, even the best pitch shifters assume that the pitch can be modeled as function of time and are unable to deal with randomly changing pitches very well. Lots of artifacts are still introduced when dealing with an "instrument" as complex as the human voice (on the other hand, they work great for flutes). Of course, if you don't change the pitch very much, you can get away with less artifacts.

Sony v. Universal

[tepples]

I wonder if the MPAA will start looking to litigate the source of illegal content, like MythTV?

MythTV merely turns your computer into a VCR. The movie studios lost that battle back in 1984.

Re:Too little too late

[gremlins]

First if you use IVTV it does record mpeg. But besides that nuv is just an encapsulation for various diffrent encoding formats. So even though it says nuv the underlying encoding format is usally either mpeg2 or mpeg4. Now if you want to view them on other platforms mplayer has a patch to play nuv files. Also you could use winmyth to play them on windows. And if you want to easily convert nuv files to divx you can use nuvexport. Or you could play them through mythweb with mythstreamtv.

Re:HDTV capture devices which ignore broadcast fla

[dowobeha]

Linux HDTV capture cards:

pcHDTV 3000
This card is the successor to the original pcHDTV 2000. Its chipset allows you to record either standard over-the-air NTSC or digital over-the-air ATSC. I believe that drivers are in the works to allow you to record unencrypted QAM channels from digital cable.

Air2PC
This newer card allows you to record digital over-the-air ATSC. It allows you to record unencrypted QAM channels from digital cable.

From what I've heard, there's no clear winner for which of these two cards is better. The pcHDTV 3000 can be purchased at the pcHDTV web site for $189. The Air2PC is on sale here for $169. If you plan to purchase, do so before July 2005. After that date, it's questionable at best whether they will still be sold.

Search the MythTV user group mailing list archives for more information about these cards and support in MythTV.