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O'Reilly Builds a MythTV Box
enrico_suave writes "While the Broadcast Flag battle continues, it's still legal to put together your own HDTV PC HTPC/PVR. O'Reilly has posted part 1 in a series of articles describing the ins and outs of Building a MythTV Box" From the article: "For now, the good news is that it is still legal to put together your own home-theater PC. Parts are now cheap enough that it is no longer ridiculous to build a PC specifically to handle TV for you, much like the VCR in Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency..."
Hi,
How is Myth's firewire support for DTV cable boxes shaping up? Preferably HDTV. Is there a DTV howto yet, with tips for receivers generally and particular models particularly?
I'd consider swapping my TiVo out (given its really crappy slow performance lately, lack of digital audio or video, and monthly fees) but it's easy to use and having to go thru config hell wouldn't be worth it for me if I didn't get anything nifty in terms of features..
Until then, I'm stuck with consulting the massive tome of Myth links I've collected over the years, half of which are out-of-date, or unmaintained (although the official docs are a good effort). Would be nice if O'Reilly brought their professionalism to it.
One thing I've never figured out - why aren't there more companies mass-marketting and selling these? How come say, Phillips or some other company hasn't picked this up and prettified it to sell to the end consumer who's never heard of Linux? (It's not like companies haven't taken Linux and put it inside devices to sell to the "Just Works" crowd - all that embedded stuff, for example, a lot of routers/firewall products etc.)
Looking at the article, I'd have to say it rates 5 out of 5 - truly up to O'Reilly's normal standards - well set out, doesn't talk down to users, and pretty pictures...*in colour* (man...talk about innovation...I have *never* seen a colour O'Reilly article/book...althought since this is /., I give it 5 mins before somebody finds one, in some random alternative universe somewhere).
This is the second article in as many days about something that that already has had 2,000 articles written about it.
"Results 1 - 10 of about 30,400 for build mythtv box. (0.28 seconds)"
Interestingly enough, the O'Reilly article is the #1 Google hit, and it has a publication date of 6/22. Today is 6/28. Wow, that's pretty fast!
9)No loss of features- you won't see disappearing features like 30 second skip.
this is one of the biggies i think. new products become popular for their features, then they become cheap when they cut those features.
I hate to be the barer of bad news... however more and more cable companies, at least here in the US are moving towards having most, if not all of their digital offerings encrypted.
Buying a QAM demodulator is easy, getting it to decode an encrypted cable network is not, and such cards that are capable of this sort of work on cable are... really non existent.
While such a PVR is nice, if you want HD programming, you are effectively limiting yourself to OTA ATSC stuff, which as we know is pretty feeble and will remain that way, just as OTA analog tv was feeble, as an encouragement to have you spend a few bucks a month for more channels through your local cable company.
Don't even get me started on the subject of QPSK (the modulation method used for digital satellite television).
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