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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..."
Bah. The broadcast flag will not make it illegal for you to build your own home-theater. How could they stop you from doing it? You just won't be able to record (or watch?) anything.
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"Follow the links," he said.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Given the good enough performance and price ($5/month) of my Tivo, I just can't justify the time and effort. My brother-in-law (aka the King of DIY) made one and he is constantly wrenching that thing.
Systm had a video how-to of building a MythTV box. Having seen the short segment (and having assembled a PVR before it), I am surprised that the article is "Part 1."
Until then, I'm stuck with consulting the massive tome of Myth links I've collected over the years, half of which are out-of-date, or unmaintained (although the official docs are a good effort).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).
I'm currently building a MythTV system on a P4 1.5GHz. I've got it running pretty well so far in Gentoo under EvilWM. The instructions I'm trying to follow are here. They're pretty complete, and even though they don't match my setup exactly, I've only run into a couple hiccups so far. It involves using Zap2It or XMLTV to download the listings, setting up your IR remote, configuring X, and more. I highly suggest using it if you want to set up your own MythTV box.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Everyone eelse has and it worked for me.
http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/
"Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to m
No-Spin MythTV.
Sweet.
Bill O'Reilly: Linus, haven't you... I mean... let's take it from the top here. You make a program, for lack of a better term, that enables people to use computers without paying for any software whatsoever. Isn't that considered illegal in the court system? Isn't that piracy by any modern standard?
Linus: Well, the system is an operating system that is maintained by many people. I just make the kernel. The userland is built by academics ar...
Bill O'Reilly: Wait a second! Wait a second! You are saying that academics build this, and trying to give it away for nothing, for the purpose of running commercial entities out of business?
Linus: No, that's not true at all... we build software to give it away to anyb...
Bill O'Reilly: And what's this I hear about writing software to enable pirating of television programs? You understand that we have men and women, DYING OVERSEAS, to protect our way of life, and our way of life is CAPITALISM... where's the logic in what you are doing?
Linus: Bill, I don't think it's a matter of capitalism but rath...
Bill O'Reilly: Awwww come on! COME ON! You're just... you know, you smug academics elites are all alike. You just want to take and take and take... and give away at the expense of the America pulbic! Well, I'll tell you -- we AIN'T buying it on the Factor. We ain't buying it one bit. And if you're smart, you'll wise up... next up on the Factor, some people claim that liberals eat live human fetuses. We'll investigate and show you how they're right and what you can do to stop it.
In my recent quest to build a MythTV box, I have discovered that building the system is not the difficult part. The challenge has been to get MythTV running smooth and stable.
;)
[rant mode ON]
I think that it's a terrific project, I just wish that there was a little more consensus and standards between all these different components for the project. MythTV's compile reference system is Debian. The drivers for the HD-3000 are Red Hat/Fedora. Knoppmyth, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Mandriva, all seem to have their little quirks - can't we all just get along?
[rant mode OFF]
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
For those impatient, there is KnoppMyth - a Knoppix based Live CD that runs MythTV. Link here It looks good, but it doesn't run so well on my P3 450 Mhz. ;-)