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MythTV Links Up with Program Guide Provider
Neil Campbell writes "As a long-time MythTV user, I found this announcement to be quite a surprise. A company by the name of TechnoVera has partnered with the founders of MythTV on an interesting project: A pay service for electronic program guide information rivaling that of Microsoft's Media Center. No more Zap2It surveys to continue using their free albeit basic service. The most important part of this is the fact that revenues from the service will be used to fund Open Source development; most notably MythTV. Registered Users will even have the opportunity to vote on feature enhancements that they would like to be incorporated into MythTV. I'm sure there will be some initial trepidation from the Linux community, but overall I think this should be considered progress. More attention and money for MythTV will result in a better product."
All MythTV really needed was a well-funded and backed listing system. Zap2it was a good mid-point, but not on par with Tivo's or Microsoft's offerings.
Old (but very decent) PC hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper... (save for older ram.. but ddr is getting old too) So, for the enthusiast, MythTV just became a lot better..
If the price is right, this could definitely work out.
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
I personally see no downside to this, it's only 5 dollars a month, which is cheaper than the TiVo monthly fee, and that money will go right back into making the product even better, plus the 5 bucks returns a more professional scheduling service for the end user. So I see it as a win-win situation.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Tivo - proprietry, limited, not available (hardware and service) everywhere in the world.
MythTV - open, flexible, can do pretty much whatever you want with it if you are willing to put in the effort, will work anywhere someone has an internet connection, and where someone (else?) is willing to provide scheduling data.
I haven't even mentioned the geek value!
and it runs on linux!
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
1. It costs money.
2. It is a subscription.
3. Only MythTV users will use this.
As far as I know, there are no retail systems based on MthyTV that would provide this service in some kind of nice package like Tivo or something. So there is no market presence (yet). So they have to rely on GNU/Linux nerds for income. This is a big problem. GNU/Linux nerds are notoriously cheap. And they hate subscriptions. Failure is immenent, I'm afraid.
All MythTV really needed was a well-funded and backed listing system. Zap2it was a good mid-point, but not on par with Tivo's or Microsoft's offerings.
Gotta disagree. Myth is nice but is still FAR lacking in many ways - UI and ease of development in particular (speaking from some experience).
The UI alone is a mess; examples: menus for eg setup descend and descend with zero context; similar settings stored all over the palce (see commercial flagging and transcoding); recordings organized by show but then loop endlessly; general ugliness (skins can only do so much).
Fix it yourself? See my second gripe.
I like Myth, but it has many warts, and missing program guide data is not one of them. ymmv.
You are only good for trolls.
And poor ones at that.
"More attention and money for MythTV will result in a better product."
...and lawsuits from the MPAA, etc. ;)
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
For someone to start a company building and selling MythTV boxes. Put a large hard drive in it, DVD burner, etc... Ideally it would be region free, HDTV capable, PVR features, able to play DVD/CD/MP3/VCD/SVCD/JPG/etc... You could rip DVDs and CDs, store your music library, use as a WebTV, and so on. It would replace your CD player, your VCR, your DVD player, your Stereo (with a radio card). It would be the one-for-all media box.
If someone started selling these pre-made and ready to go, I'll be the first to buy. Of course, I could probably build one, but I KNOW the market is there to buy them if somebody steps up to the plate.
PK: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Damn, I would be willing to pay for a decent service in the UK. Oh well, time will tell...
Did you really read the FAQ?
Is LxMSuite available outside the USA?
TV listing information is currently limited to the USA. If there is enough demand for listing information outside of North America, we can make DataDirect::TV data available to European users.
If you brush it off and don't contact them how would they know there is Demand?
although they might not work as well
Exactly the reson why $5 a month sounds very reasonable.
And the knowledge that they fear is a weapon to be used against them...
Lesson #1: Microsoft cares only for mindshare, not profit. They could be losing money hand over fist with Media Center (like they do with most of their non-OS non-Office ventures), but they do not care as long as they have staked their claim in some new area.
Which is pretty much why I use MythTV. Oh and the fact that I can do what I want with my media, and I can watch HDTV using a Celeron 2.5ghz instead of a P4 3ghz with HT, and I don't have to pay $1200 for a Myth machine the list goes on and on...
That said, I think it's really cool that MythTV will be getting a more fully featured program guide.
Yeah I'd say you're astroturfing. Myth has had the exact same data data as MCE for free for quite some time now.
The thing that frustrates me more than anything else is that there's no excuse for this, except for the choices made by the project leader.
:)
I don't think this is down to a choice my Isaac but simply down to the ad-hoc nature with which FOSS projects such as Myth are developed. Different bits come from different people and so consistency can be limited. What they actually need is a "UI guru" or a organised team of UI people to sanitise the UI and new elements as they are implemented, however that involves interested parties to have time to do that sort of thing and many (techies) perceive the UI as somewhat secondary to the "cool stuff" (I am often no different with projects I'm working on, preferring to play with cool new stuff instead of boring sanitisation of other people's work).
There's a lot to be read into the fact that users will now be able to vote on which features should be prioritized for development.
I must make a very important point here that many people (users) just don't get: with FOSS software, everyone developing it is freely putting their time into the project and getting nothing in return except the features they are implementing. This means that in general, developers working on a FOSS project will only implement features that they themselves want. So basically, if you want something doing then you may well have to do it yourself, you certainly shouldn't expect someone else to give up their time to do it.
Commercial projects, OTOH, are not bound by such problems and so a developer may well develop a feature you want. However, this only works to a point - larger companies (i.e. those who don't significantly benefit from a minority group buying a product) are unlikely to implement features for individual users and in many cases get too much input from the marketting people who want "cool" stuff people are never going to use or want to rip out functionality on the grounds that it "overcomplicates" it. When was the last time Microsoft implemented a feature you asked for?
I think there may well be an advantage in FOSS projects which have commercial backing so long as the commercial side doesn't have _too much_ influence over the featureset, etc (Asterisk seems to be a good example of an FOSS project with commercial backing)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I burn 2-4 candy bars a session when I'm coding, and countless cans of DP. If I told you that by giving two candy bars a week to MythTV, we could polish it into the true omniscient media solution that we all want, would you do it? That is the cost. In exchange we get a company that, unlike most, puts money back into open source, hates MS, and worked with the devs instead of hijacking the app for their own commercial gain! These guys are willing to pay for something they could have gotten for free and make it better for all of us!!!! They were the first to pay for something that they could have gotten for free, and now they are offering a solution that benefits us and we all throw stones and ask for a discount! I'll bet they could offer it for $30.00 a year if they keep all of the money for themselves instead of funding open source development, is that what you guys want????
Where are the JetCars and Teflon Suits I was promised??
If I wanted to pay a monthly fee for PVR service, I wouldn't have built a MythTV box - I would have bought a Tivo.
Having a company start charging $5 per month for the same service Zap2It provides only serves to encourage Zap2It to begin charging real-life cash for their service as well. And in the end, that means fewer choices, not more.
That programming guide information is sent over both cable and terrestrial broadcast systems.
If you pay for what is already being sent into your house for free, what does that say about you?
"I can't code?"
How about "I have a life"?
#DeleteChrome
I think MythTV badly needs an Edje UI. That would be a match made in heaven.
(For those unfamiliar with Edje, it is the UI library used in E17 and EFL-based applications like Entrance.)
Am I a hipster-doofus?
"It's great that OSS lets people fix things like this, but it should also let people slap bad programmers in the face. "You put in this menu and didn't use the right key binding, slap! No cookie.""
Hey you get what you pay for. He wrote it for himself so he must like it.
If you do not like it.
1. Help him make it better.
2. Don't use it.
3. PAY him to make the change.
That is what gets me. You never gave him a cookie you are a free loader. If you do not like you have no right to do anything.
I had a problem with KDevelop. It is hard to figure out how to get a project to link with external libraries. I posted that it was harder than Ajunta. KDevelop is a great IDE for people not doing things like FLTK development. For KDE, QT and GTK it is wonderful. But I have no right to slap them because it does not work the way I want it to.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.