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

Mac Mini Frontend

[LinuxOnHal]

Who's ready for a Mac Mini frontend?

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?

Ooooh... timestretch!

[tinrobot]

That means I can watch 24 in 18.

Why is this in the Apple section?

[SECProto]

I agree, frontend support for the mac was one of the bigger changes, but... it still will not record tv shows on a mac. it can only be used to watch already-recorded shows. Which is not much different than a video player, which is not the only function of MythTV

Shouldn't Apple put something like this out?

[Joshua53077]

Cool program. This looks like a perfect compliment to the digital lifestyle. If this were part of the iLife suite, I bet a lot of people would jump at it. If Apple had put it in iLife 05, it definitely would have justified the $20 increase in price, and it probably would have sold better and could draw more people to the platform.

Re:Shouldn't Apple put something like this out?

[mboverload]

mythTV is NOWHERE near ready for primetime. It is still a bitch to install and update.

Hopefully this new version will fix some of these issues, but don't kid yourself. Call me when it comes with a graphical installer and I dont have to edit conf files.

Re:timestretch?

[Bohnanza]

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

or...

[Ooter]

"timestretch" feature (for changing playback speed but not the pitch so you can watch shows more quickly)

Or, if you're from the south, you can slow down the show for easier understanding.

Re:or...

[Phillup]

if you're from the south, you can slow down the show

But, does it add the extra syllables?

Re:Why Apple?

[lpangelrob2]

I'm not really sure, but here's a guess...

if (product.getDescription().contains("Apple")) {
setCategory("Apple");
logger.warn(this.class + " [TODO] -- needs to extend SteveJobsRealityDistortionField");
}

Obligatory disclaimer... I own a couple of Apples.

I can do ya one better!

[Trolling4Columbine]

Not watch 24 at all!

I've got ya beat by 18 hours, plus I haven't suffered through a mindless, repetitive story about a guy who likes to yell at people.

Re:I can do ya one better!

[ewg]

I loved that part where that guy had a gun and was pointing it at that other guy.

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

My prediction for the DVR market

[Quiet_Desperation]

Apple will buy Tivo.

Disclaimer: I own a DirecTivo. I don't really know why I needed to declare that. I think I just wanted to sound important.

[1] Tivo is starting to look like it might become "beleaguered" much like Apple was declared during the years 1970 through 2005. Yes, Apple was called beleaguered by the tech media even before it existed.

[2] Tivo is (I think) Linux based. Making it compilable on BSD Unix is, like, what? Two man hours? What? Different motherborads? Ok, four man hours.

[3] Steve Jobs wants the Mac to be the center of our digital media warm fuzziness thing where we go for brief respites from the wacky demon haunted world in which we live.

[4] The Grammys have become dominated by hip hop and gangsta rap. Only a vast array of Mac powered DVRs spread across the nation can protect us from whatever.

It can't be any more obvious that that! You savvy?

You heard it here first.

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."

...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.

Re:Why Apple?

[BorgCopyeditor]

An honest mythtake...

You mythpelled "honetht."

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:Why Apple?

[hunterx11]

If you really owned a couple of Apples, you'd do it this way:

if([[Product description] rangeOfString:@"Apple"] != NSNotFound) {
[Article setCategory:@"Apple"];
NSLog(@"%@%@", self, @"[TODO] -- needs to extend SteveJobsRealityDistortionField");
}