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MythTV Compared with Windows Media Center
legoburner writes "Tom's Hardware has a nice comparison of MythTV and Windows Media Center Edition, and it seems that they preferred MythTV by quite a margin: 'Enter MythTV, a grand unification of personal digital video recording and home theatre technology, and a magnum opus of modular design, freedom of expression and personal entertainment.'"
Good news Tom's Hardware picks MythTV over Windows MCE (Media Center Edition), but maybe not so much a surprise. Tom's Hardware's preference isn't going to mean a lick to the general consumers. I can't tell my neighbors MythTV is bitchin' because they're not going to have a clue how do it themselves, and I'm running out of support hours and don't have time to set up everyone with MythTV, let alone support it afterwards.
What would be really cool is if some company pulled a Red Hat, or Suse, etc., with MythTV whereby they offer their "version" of a MythTV distribution bundled with hardware and all. With minor standardization, it's a product that could spark consumer interest. This would offer an alternative to the always present MS MCE, and an interesting competition (potentially) with TiVo.
....but it is not because it is too difficult to install and set up. I am not trying to start a flame war, but I have been using Linux for years (so I am not a total noob) and decided to Give MythTV a try. After months of work and changing TV tuner cards 3 times I gave up. MythTV will never be any competition to Windows MCE until you can just put in a disk, answer a few yes or no questions and then start using it.
My old sig was REALLY stoopid.
1) Its an article about MythTV which doesn't even really mention MS Media Center except in one small table at the very end
2) The table mentioned above compares Myth against MCE 2004 not MCE 2005 which has been out forever, MCE 2005 R2 which has been out for some time, or Vista which is almost here.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Features in MythTV that are not in Windows MCE 2004:
- Open Source; free to obtain, use, and modify
- Software and hardware decoding support
- Output to DivX and MPEG2
- Runs on Linux and MacOS, feeds to Windows (Windows MCE runs on -- guess what -- Windows only!)
- Ultra-low system requirements
- Support for companion and third-party plug-ins
- Scalable network architecture (master/slaves) (MCE has only basic TCP/IP support)
- Record once, transcode and play anywhere (in MCE you can only record and play using the same device)
Features in Windows MCE not in MythTV:
- Simple setup and configuration
Guess which one will have the biggest market share?
There are a few companies out there offering solutions on a small scale. Not the best deal, but if you want support you pay for support. https://monolithmc.com/catalog.php http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?cPath=21_29&prod ucts_id=44&osCsid=1adfce851bdfddf0bd199eded2ddf5eb
Personally I'd just build my own on KnoppMyth and be done with it, but whatever floats your boat.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
It enables me to make the ideal media setup, for me.
The potential for separation of backend and frontend allows me to have my loud, big, lots-o-storage system somewhere far away from my TV, and a quiet, yet affordable box with my TV.
My frontend is nothing but a micro ATX case with a motherboard (ASUS A8N-VM CSM), processor (Athlon XP64 3000), and 1 512M DIMM. No hard drive, no extra video card, booting diskless. Thanks to the linux base I'm able to PXE boot, and have a tmpfs root with about 40M of ram used, and nfs mount usr. Now I have a really slick frontend that I can sleep and resume, and it comes up in less time than my TV takes to turn on its lamp right back to whatever menu I left it at, but still have no hard disk whatsoever in it. It's very quiet, and passes the WAF test. The kind of power and flexibility I can get out of a mythtv on linux solution is far beyond anything that involves Windows (try having a fully persistant-storage free (including optical drives or usb storage) windows box that can run MCE and serve reliably as a frontend, persisting through all sorts of activity including sleep... My backend records OTA HD and uses a free service to get TV listings, no subscription, has everything stored on a software RAID5 with 4 250GB disks, and I can access it to make scheduling changes from anywhere via the web if someone say recommends a show while I'm at work. Can also download other media (i.e. fansubs), dump them in a particular directory tree, and the frontend can access it in an easy-to-use interface as well.
One thing I will say is that for more exotic configs, it naturally takes more work to set up than probably other things do, and in allowing the exotic configuration, a lot of confusing options end up facing the novice user (kinda like vi vs. notepad). Also, as it is only part of a full solution, it can't even simplify some config options because it quite frankly has no idea if the user will have a remote, if so what remote, if they will use a keyboard, maybe a joystick, if a joystick no idea on the keymapping... If it will be running backend and frontend type tasks on the same box, if separate the frontend may not know where the master backend is... It has various playback options that work better depending on your video card and such, and while they have a 'decent' default behavior, it doesn't de-interlace by default, doesn't enable any sort of sync to vblank by default, and doesn't enable XvMC by default, because it can't assume any of these are wanted or will perform right with the frontend's hardware. It could be assissted by a discovery architecture for the frontend (if localhost not responding, discover backends), and maybe a hardware/configuration database where it uses, say, lspci data and checks for XvMCConfig and other config files to have a better guess as to what the user can do, but it shouldn't sacrifice the power of it's configurability whatever may happen.
Once configured, it's slick and easy to use, no one has ever been confused by the interface that's used it at my house, I've never had to answer any questions pertaining to usage and once I got everything behaving correctly, I haven't had to touch configuration. Other people have scheduled recordings without being confused or anything, and that's about the hardest task left to do with the frontend. It could be leveraged as a part of a pre-configured solution where hardware and software config is already known (last I heard MCE had particular config requirements, so mythtv's ability to cope with a wider config probably contributes to this criticism).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I have some experience with Linux ... I've played with Ubuntu, Red Hat, DreamLinux, and Freespire on my brother's PC, so I only ever get occassional exposure. I'm good with the OS X command line, but don't use it for day to day tasks usually. I'm familiar with apt-get and Synaptic and can usually work around dependency problems.
however, getting MythTV running on my brother's box proved to be really, REALLY difficult.
Enter KnoppMyth.
20 minute install and 10 minutes to configure. And it all just worked. I'm sold.
Plus, he can use his main machine, a Tiger-running Mac, as a front end as well. Its terriffic. Download it. NOW.
First, please see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193371&cid=158 64227a prior Slashdot comment for my detailed writeup of what a totally state-of-the-art MythTV high-definition system is capable of. I've had this system up and running since early January 2006, and its power and features still so far exceed any available commercial application it's not funny.
The funny thing is that I heard so many stories about how MythTV is the ne plus ultra of difficult installations that I actually put off getting started for some time after assembling the necessary parts. Some common MythTV installation mistakes:
MISTAKE: Not trying to build one because everyone knows MythTV installation makes grown men weep.
SOLUTION: It might do so . . . For those who've never installed Linux before. Yes, having some experience with Linux, or the willingness to learn along the way with learning MythTV internals, is essential.
MISTAKE: Not trying to build one because MythTV only runs on custom-built, homemade systems and I don't know how to build one.
SOLUTION: I'm two thumbs when it comes to hardware; even my earlier 2.8TB RAID 5 array (which I'm not using for MythTV storage, but will at some point) was more a software project than a hardware one. For MythTV, as I mention in my message above, I simply bought a stock 3.0GHz Pentium 4 Sony Vaio system. It did have the advantages of a) being pretty darn quiet and b) being black with flip-down covers covering the drive bay (a family member who visited recently didn't even recognize the case as belonging to a PC until I pointed it out), but these were simply superficial bonuses. There's no need to have to handcraft a SFF system in a "media PC" case unless one really wants to.
MISTAKE: Trying to build a high-definition system on the cheap.
SOLUTION: Anyone who does not feel confident about his technical skills and doesn't need high defintion ought to buy a TiVo. Seriously. Don't think that a MythTV system will somehow save you money, because it probably won't and probably won't look as nice sitting under the TV set. For those who moan and groan about the monthly TiVo fee, I'll bet they're also the ones who moan and groan about paying $15 a month for World of Warcraft despite it being a far, far, far better value per dollar than any movie, DVD, or other videogame purchase. Get out of living in mom's basement, loser!
That said, anyone who wants to build a high definition-capable system needs to look at MythTV hard because, as mentioned, it can do things no commercial system can do. However, high definition takes horsepower. Lots of horsepower. The mythtv-users list sees a constant influx of new people who think that they can get away with assembling a HD-capable system with the spare parts sitting in their closets. They fail, then go away whining about how "MythTV is hard."
Here's what one needs:
* 3.0GHz Pentium 4 or better. Don't try to use a less-powerful system and then rely on XvMC to fill the gap.
* Nvidia FX 5200 or better. No, don't try ATI. No, don't try a MX400.
* Lots of storage space. Each high-definition recording stream takes 5-8GB per hour. I can record three such at once. Do the math.
* A standalone PC. The best way, by far, to install MythTV is to follow Jarod Wilson's justly-famous installation guide, which uses Fedora Core. Don't try to press in a system already being used for something else to the task (at least not as a frontend); it's not worth the hassle.
BOTTOM LINE: Anyone with some prior Linux i
Actually the grandparent is correct. The TiVo can transfer any MPEG2 encoded video file from a PC running the TiVo Desktop software (or Galleon). The video file can be viewed while it is transferring. It works very well. The downside is that since TiVo only supports MPEG2, the file sizes are quite large and the transfer time can take a while. The TiVo S3, which is supposed to be released in about a week can play MPG4 formatted videos, but it hasn't been confirmed whether it will support the PC to TiVo video transfer feature.
Uh-huh. And you typed that message on your wrist-PC while skydiving and enjoying the great outdoors, right?