MythTV 0.20 Released

An anonymous reader writes "The latest version of MythTV, the open source PVR application for Linux, has been released. New features (as documented in the release notes) include a new menu system, an improved internal DVD player, support for DVB radio channels, and mouse support. There is also a new plugin – MythArchive – which allows recordings be written to DVD. You can download MythTV from MythTV.org."

Comments

I so wish this were on FreeBSD

[jimstapleton]

It (and better TV Tuner drivers) are probably the only things that really make me want Linux over FreeBSD. Still, it's a nice release, even if I can't use it.

Re:I so wish this were on FreeBSD

[jimstapleton]

really? Where is it under ports? Or do I have to manually build it from the myth download? How painful is that?

Re:I so wish this were on FreeBSD

[misleb]

Wouldn't you build a set top box anyway? Why is it an either/or choice between Linux and FreeBSD? Install Linux on the Myth box and FreeBSD for your desktop. Whats the problem?

-matthew

Re:I so wish this were on FreeBSD

[misleb]

Your biggest problem is going to be hardware support. AFAIK, FreeBSD only supports the Haupage PVR-250... and not very well. The last thing you need is a poorly supported tuner card. That will make or break a setup.

Re:I so wish this were on FreeBSD

[usleepless]

checkout http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/1 02765. it is a patched version of the pvr250 cards for pvr150/500 cards. i am running mythtv 0.18-fixes on FreeBSD 4.11 using two pvr500 cards in one box ( 4 tuners ). i have clients on freebsd and on xebian/xbox

Re:I so wish this were on FreeBSD

[Mad_Rain]

MythTV is available on FreeBSD, as others have pointed out. http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/FreeBSD

Questions

[kevin_conaway]

For you Myth users out there, I have a few questions:

1. Is it possible to create "playlists" of TV Shows? Say I wanted to rip all my futurama DVDs to a Myth box and play them at random. Could I do that?
2. Are there any reputable places that will put together a box for me?

Thanks. Congrats to the MythTV team

Re:Questions

[mbelly]

http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?cPath=21_29&prod ucts_id=44

A full system built with HDTV support.

Re:Questions

[bshensky]

Playlist of TV shows have been available in 0.19 - works very nicely for my 5 year old!

(Not that I'm putting him in front of the tube with a playlist and walking away just like that. That would be wrong. But those darned Thomas the Tank Engine episodes are only 4 minutes long apiece!)

Re:Questions

[ParadoxDruid]

Is it possible to create "playlists" of TV Shows? Say I wanted to rip all my futurama DVDs to a Myth box and play them at random. Could I do that?

I don't know about MythTV, but I have all my Futurama DVDs ripped to my Linux box, and have a "Random episode" icon on my desktop that runs this bash script:

#!/bin/bash
count=`ls /home/paradox/media_drive/Media/Futurama |wc -l`
let "pick = $RANDOM % $count"
let "pick += 1"
kaffeine "/home/paradox/media_drive/Media/Futurama/`ls /home/paradox/media_drive/Media/Futurama |sed -n "$pick"p`"

Re:Questions

[tlhIngan]

One thing I want to know... how well does it support smart "season passes" like TiVo? (I've never used myth, sorry)

E.g., if I have two shows to record, one of them is "high priority" and has precedence over the "low priority" show (i.e., high priority shows get recorded first, while low priority shows get recorded later (days/hours) if there's a conflict). Now, if the low priority show suddenly has a single showing the conflicts, while the high priority show has a rerun later, TiVo will record the low priority in preference, then schedule to record the rerun. Of course, if both shows are single showing and conflict, only the high priority show gets recorded.

(Extend example to multiple shows and across multiple tuners, as well - dual tuners gets rid of a two-way conflict, but it is possible to have more). Ditto with shows you pick to record...

Re:Questions

[slashbob22]

One thing I want to know... how well does it support smart "season passes" like TiVo? (I've never used myth, sorry)

It works very well in this way. You can set fine grained priority settings to each individual recording or entire season recordings. In my experience (and I haven't seen a setting otherwise) the application stores information on shows within the next 2 weeks. If the first conflict arose as described: the high level one would be postponed to a later viewing IFF it has a later viewing (within 2 weeks) and the low priority did not.

I only run a single tuner, but I find it enough for my tv habits. I _think you can run as many as physically possible in your box. I can't give you examples of every single recording conflict an how it handles it - there is likely some documentation on it (site is slashdotted though).

I have been extremely happy with the season recording features and once the system is configured MythTV runs like a charm.

Re:Questions

[14CharUsername]

You can set priorities like you describe on 0.19, so I assume the same is true for 0.20.

Re:Questions

[blurfus]

Have a look at MonolithMC

Re:Questions

[Minwee]

I _think_ you can run as many as physically possible in your box.

You can run as many as are physically possible on your _network_. If you were a major cable-hound, or running a PVR service for your entire building, you could stash a room full of back-end servers in the basement with half a dozen tuner cards each and then network them to tiny front-end machines that sat on top of everyone's TV.

There really is no limit to how many channels of late night porn you can record.

Re:Questions

[WatertonMan]

How well does it work with Satellite or Cable HDTV content?

Re:Questions

[wormbin]

I bought a MythTV system from Cosmos Engineering. You can probably save money by building one yourself but I liked the fact that it just works out of the box. It was reviewed in Linux Journal so that might be reputable enough for you.

Re:Questions

[Fratz]

"How well does it work with Satellite or Cable HDTV content?"

Assuming the format is QAM, the tuner cards will tune any unencrypted QAM signals. You'd need to check with your cable or satellite provider to see how many channels are unencrypted.

Re:Questions

[Afrosheen]

If you have comcast or other cable providers that use firewire on their digital boxen, you can record and watch unencrypted HD streams via firewire. Premium channels will be encrypted and therefore will give you ZERO output on the FW port (that includes anything you pay extra for like HBO and whatnot). Sorry, but them's the rules. Thanks DRM.

Re:Questions

[wolrahnaes]

Short Answer: It doesn't.

Long Answer: Dish network can be tuned with a DVB-S card and some serious effort, but information on the exact process is sparse. DirecTV can not be directly fed to a PC. Cable HDTV in theory should at least allow you to tune the broadcast locals and some cable providers are putting other channels out unencrypted, but getting a PC to tune cable HDTV is still sort of voodoo.

If you're bored and have the required equipment, why not give it a shot, but don't plan on it being usable.

Re:Questions

[harryk]

Having built a few for friends and family I have to say 2 things. One ... give it a go for yourself, it's really not that terribly difficult, especially if you are dedicating a box to it, and starting from scratch. Second, if you really don't want to do it yourself, I'd be happy to build one fore you.

The biggest costs are the base components, tuner, motherboard/cpu/ram, storage. A case ... well... everyone has their own opinions, but I cannot justify spending 200 to 300 on a decent htpc case, I'd rather just find a decent beige box, or a 2u server case on the cheap.

If you're seriously interested, I could build one for you.

Re:Questions

[mbelly]

As others have said before, it supposedly works with unencrypted QAM channels on Cable TV, but works best with OTA (Over the Air) HDTV. I have my own box that I am running the OS (Knoppmyth) on. I am using it for SDTV with a Hauppauge PVR-500 card and OTA HDTV with a PCHDTV HD-3000 card. It is working great; the Knoppmyth team (and MythTV, etc etc) have done a great job in bringing this all together.

Re:Questions

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Of course, you should make it easy for the police to raid your house without disrupting too much, because you'll be using so much power and generating so much heat that it'll look a lot like you're running a major hydroponic drug-production operation.

Re:Questions

[jedidiah]

>> Is it possible to create "playlists" of TV Shows? Say I wanted
>> to rip all my futurama DVDs to a Myth box and play them at random. Could I do that?

MythTV just uses whatever external media player you want to use.

It could be mplayer, xine or some shell script of your own creation (like my MythTV setup).

Re:Questions

[jakep_82]

Voodoo? Please don't comment about things you know nothing about.

For all of $75 you can get yourself a Kworld ATSC-110 tuner card that will in fact tune HDTV. That includes OTA broadcasts (ATSC) and cable brodcasts (QAM). It's fully supported in recent kernels and takes just minutes to set up in MythTV with ATSC. QAM is a little more difficult, but still only took a couple hours. In the last week I've recorded a couple dozen hours of flawless HD from different broadcast channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, PBS, WB).

Re:Questions

[wolrahnaes]

I never said broadcast HDTV was hard, that's worked nicely for quite a while. From what I see when lurking AVS Forum, TheGreenButton, and a few other HTPC sites, QAM is still a crapshoot.

Re:Questions

[jakep_82]

Umm...did you read what I wrote? QAM took a couple hours to set up and works perfectly. Hardly voodoo. All of my HD recordings are made with QAM and they work 100% of the time.

Re:Questions

[wolrahnaes]

Did you read what I said? You got lucky. There are a multitude of issues still facing proper QAM support, not the least of which are cable companies encrypting everything or putting the channels on odd frequencies. I guess I should rephrase what I said to "It's easy to build a machine capable of recieving QAM, but whether everything will work right is a crapshoot. It could be perfect out of the box, or it could require tweaking and manuallt mapping channels, or it might not work at all if the cable company isn't doing everything the way they're supposed to (99.9% of their HD customers are using their boxes, so they don't care about the homebrewers).

I'll give you this: In 2004 when I first started looking in to tuning HD with a PC, even OTA was iffy on both Windows and Linux. By early 2005, OTA was pretty much locked down to a science and the first signs of functional QAM were showing. Now in late 2006, if you're willing to buy from a certain list of tuners and take some time debugging, you can probably have a QAM-tuning HTPC. It's still not easy though (I define easy as KnoppMyth + PVR250 + nVidia, which is always point-and-click level painless, and even easier than Windows MCE IMO).

Re:Questions

[jakep_82]

I didn't get lucky. It's the law, plain and simple. And you're totally wrong about cable boxes. My cable company charges an extra $5 a month for an HD cable box. Why would I pay $5 for something they're required to provide for free? The only reason for me to have a box is if I want to pay an exorbitant amount of money for a digital package that has a bunch of channels I don't watch. Long story short, a lot of people have HDTV's, they just want basic or expanded basic cable, and they expect to get HD channels with that. If the cable company stopped broadcasting unencrypted QAM they'd have hundreds of complaints.

The only point you have is manually mapping channels. That's the reason it took me a couple hours to set up QAM. I had to use dvbscan to get a list of channels, and then manually check each one to determine what they were. I went through about 100 channels before I found the pertinent ones.

Re:Questions

[wolrahnaes]

I didn't get lucky. It's the law, plain and simple.

No, you got lucky. It may be the law, but based on my experience that really doesn't matter. I'm on Buckeye Cablesystem right now, who you may recall got some nationwide press a few years back for somehow getting the FBI to raid the homes of uncappers. Getting them to even admit CableCard exists took an hour on the phone and only their $15 a month DVR offering has a Firewire port. I don't have a HD tuner right now (new car = no budget for toys), but I'm willing to bet that I wouldn't even get locals if I was to plug one in.

The law only becomes relevant if enough people complain that the FCC actually gets on the cable company's ass.

Re:Questions

[jakep_82]

And I would take that bet. It's interesting to me that you're arguing a point about which you have no personal experience.

I'm not talking about some fringe group of MythTV users that would complain. A lot of HD sets made today have built in digital tuners. As such, those TV's are capable of receiving uncencrypted QAM right out of the box. That's how I watched HD for the first six months after I bought my TV. The guy that sold me the TV told me I could just plug in to regular cable and get HD. I already knew that, but it just goes to show I'm not the only one.

Ultimately you're making statements based on guesses and hearsay. Get a digital tuner and prove me wrong. Until then I consider this conversation over.

new features

[samsonov]

Since the poor mythtv site appears to be slashdotted already:

Major changes

* Menus are now drawn by MythUI using OpenGL. This option can be enabled/disabled in the Appearance settings.
* Improved internal DVD player - now supporting menus and other missing features
* Added MHEG content implementation (Interactive TV in UK)
* Added Hotplug support for removable media in Media Monitor and MythGallery
* Added support for the HDHomeRun encoding device
* Added support for basic FreeBox recorders
* Added support for H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) TS decoding
* Added an MPEG1/MPEG2/MPEG4-AVC IP network recorder
* Added internal UPnP support for TV and Music
* Added experimental second commercial detector
* New socket class for backend communications
* OSD image cache which improves channel changing speed
* Fixed program transition while Watching LiveTV
* Added beginnings of firewire capture support for MacOS
* Support for DVB radio channels and guide data collected via EIT for them
* Added mouse support in menus, including gestures

* Menus are now drawn by MythUI using OpenGL. This option can be enabled/disabled in the Appearance settings.
* Improved internal DVD player - now supporting menus and other missing features
* Added MHEG content implementation (Interactive TV in UK)
* Added Hotplug support for removable media in Media Monitor and MythGallery
* Added support for the HDHomeRun encoding device
* Added support for basic FreeBox recorders
* Added support for H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) TS decoding
* Added an MPEG1/MPEG2/MPEG4-AVC IP network recorder
* Added internal UPnP support for TV and Music
* Added experimental second commercial detector
* New socket class for backend communications
* OSD image cache which improves channel changing speed
* Fixed program transition while Watching LiveTV
* Added beginnings of firewire capture support for MacOS
* Support for DVB radio channels and guide data collected via EIT for them
* Added mouse support in menus, including gestures

Re:new features

[fruey]

The changes are so good, you get them twice.

Re:new features

[tji]

MythTV could really use a marketing guy to help with the new releases (actually, there are many open source projects that could benefit from this). The list of highly technical updates to MythTV don't really do justice to where MythTV is today.

As a MythTV user, here is what I see as important, and having improved in 0.20:

- MythTV is a free / open source PVR application, with support for analog, digital, and HDTV recording in most international standards (i.e. it's usable in the U.S., Europe, Asia, etc.). It includes many features not available in commercial PVR products.
    - Automatic commercial detection and removal, or manual skip forward/back.
    - Transcode of video to other formats/resolutions -- including DVD export in 0.20.
    - Network based structure, allowing 'backend' recording storage on different machine than the 'frontend' display. (i.e. stick the backend with all the cable connections, antennas, loud fans and tons of disk in the basement, put a small/quiet frontend near your TV for output.)
    - HDTV support: With supported HD capture card, terrestrial broadcast HD and Cable HD are supported (with the exception of encrypted cable HD channels - which cannot be decrypted on any PC PVR)
    - Improved MacOS X support. The 0.20 version has greatly improved the Mac support, especially for the Intel based Macs. Performance optimizations for HD video playback make the Core Duo Mac Minis a great choice for a small/quiet frontend box.

Re:new features

[FireFury03]

* Added MHEG content implementation (Interactive TV in UK)

It should be noted that MHEG-5 is currently only used in the UK on DVB- T , not DVB-S (hopefully this will change when FreeSat gets off the ground next year). ATM all the interactive content on DVB-S is propriatory (not-so-)OpenTV stuff. :(

Re:new features

[chrismcdirty]

It's a changelog, not a marketing statement. It lets you know what changed. Plain as that.

Re:new features

[Moofie]

"MythTV could really use a marketing guy to help with the new releases"

Who's going to pay them?

Re:new features

[Captain_Chaos]

HDTV support: With supported HD capture card, terrestrial broadcast HD and Cable HD are supported (with the exception of encrypted cable HD channels - which cannot be decrypted on any PC PVR)

Maybe not for ATSC (the American standard), but I can watch the encrypted HD test channels on my digital cable connection without problems via my DVB-C (the European standard) card. I did have to add the channels manually though, the channel scanner did not find them automatically (although this is one of the things that reportedly has been fixed in 0.20).

Re:new features

[Cromac]

There aren't Open Source marketing people? Developers give away their time and skill, why not marketers?

Re:new features

[Moofie]

Because developers get to scratch their own itches. Marketers try to convince other people to buy something.

My question is this: Why is ANY open-source project concerned about marketing? If it works, people will use it. You've already got the best kind of marketing there is: Word of mouth. If it doesn't work, a slick marketing campaign won't fix it.

It's not my time or money, so I wouldn't presume to tell people how to spend them. I just don't see why a marketing person would work for free, or why they'd be necessary in the first place.

Re:new features

[MECC]

"Why is ANY open-source project concerned about marketing? If it works, people will use it. You've already got the best kind of marketing there is: Word of mouth. If it doesn't work, a slick marketing campaign won't fix it."

http://xkcd.com/c125.html

Really, quite offtopic the the article, but relatively funny relative to the parent...

Re:new features

[rlbond86]

So now Linux users consider themselves "people"? What is the world coming to...

Re:new features

[IAmTheDave]

How this feature list only gets you from .19 to .20 is beyond me.

Version 1.0 - released 25 years from now - will be sick!

Re:new features

[LordSnooty]

It's great though that they brought in support for interactive, as well as DVB radio support, it really takes mythtv towards being the complete replacement for a Freeview box. I'd love to know if it copes with Red Button any better than my NTL box.

Re:new features

[batkiwi]

Version 1.0 will likely be the first fully stable production ready version. It's VERY good right now, but is what I'd call beta-heading-towards-RC quality. The plugins occasionally crash (especially mythmusic) and while I am a pro at setting it up after doing so 5 times, doing it without a guide isn't as easy as installing (for example) XP MCE.

So there was .1, .2, .3.... .19, .20 releases in the 0.X line.

Re:new features

[triso]

Why don't you volunteer to write for them? I'm sure they could use the help.

Re:new features

[modecx]

There aren't Open Source marketing people? Developers give away their time and skill, why not marketers?

I think the difference is that it actually takes something special to be a programmer, and to use those skills to build something like MythTV, whereas most any humanoid can be a successful marketer.

Re:new features

[ookaze]

MythTV could really use a marketing guy to help with the new releases (actually, there are many open source projects that could benefit from this). The list of highly technical updates to MythTV don't really do justice to where MythTV is today

No, MythTV wouldn't benefit anything, as it's not a shrinkwrapped finished product.
You'll only get more frustration.
You already see people on this thread that installed dev versions and then complain MythTV is not stable.

Re:new features

[tji]

A real product marketing launch would include more information about how to install the product (in this case, it could include information appropriate for each user level ( guru: svn,configure,make,install; linux admin: rpm, apt-get, emerge, etc.; newbie: Upcoming KnoppMyth release)) with links to detailed information for each.

MythTV is pretty much the worst case scenario, because of all the variables involved (hardware receiver cards+drivers, cable TV systems, broadcast TV systems, guide data, etc). Especially when doing HD.. scanning for the channels and setting up guide data can be tricky. The install/setup can be made much easier, it will be very difficult to make it bulletproof.

But, I still think the original point is valid.. doing a real corporate marketing style product launch would be beneficial, and help to promote open source projects and avoid many of the common pitfalls.

Win32 version

[paganizer]

All I want to know is, is where is the win32 version? this would be SWEET running on WinME!
(yes, obviously my karma is too good)

Re:Win32 version

[IflyRC]

WinME might be "acceptable" but I'm sure it would run a lot better on Win XP.

Re:Win32 version

[xtracto]

All I want to know is, is where is the win32 version? this would be SWEET running on WinME!

I dont understand why the funny mod...

I have just bought a DVB usb dongle for my Notebook and I would like to try it out. I have Kubuntu installed, however it is very unstable and I usually only log in to "play" with it (wireless does not work, graphics card incompatible, etc etc etc...).

So I would have the same question, is there any kind of Win32 version?, now that I think about it, MythTV would be excellent for a "Vmware Appliance", is there anything like that out?>

Re:Win32 version

[ZachPruckowski]

this would be SWEET running on WinMCE!

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Win32 version

[xtracto]

Oh, and I just thought that, I dont know if the USB DVB dongle I bought work in Linux so maybe it would be impossible to use it there (it is an ebay cheapo usb-dvb dongle). Does anyone know anything about the compatiblity of those things?

I would really love to test this PVR thing as I have read a lot about them but have never used one of them (I dont watch almost any TV... usually just rent movies via screenselet).

Re:Win32 version

[rmallico]

dont' think the hardware would be supported in vmware... i don't think they have accelerated DX9 drivers for vmware... they are SVGA ones...

Re:Win32 version

[thgreatoz]

I think you missed the joke.

Re:Win32 version

[Viper_Viper]

Here you go! http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/SoC2006(Curre ntly down) http://code.google.com/soc/mythtv/about.html(No Detailed Info)

Re:Win32 version

[Aladrin]

No, I think he got the joke and did it one better.

In case you missed it, WinMCE is Microsoft's lame attempt to make their version of MythTV. It is much less complete, much more annoying, and costs a lot more. Plus, it's counted as a fully ready product, while MythTv is only saying they are at 0.20. In other words, Nowhere near done.

Man, explaining jokes always takes the fun out of them -sigh-

Re:Win32 version

[Klaidas]

Has anyone noticved that when a post ends in "Bye bye karma" or "So much for my karma", etc, it actualy gets moderated up?

Re:Win32 version

[Lumpy]

search google for mediaportal.

note: using a HD capture card to tune and record QUAM signals will not work under windows. the windows driver for the HD tuner card is broken intentionally to keep evil-doers from watching and recording digital CATV.

also, if you are using windows, you HAVE to have XP.. ME is 100% crap and will not work in any way shape or form... also you need 3X the machine under windows to run mediaportal.. MythTV can run on as little as a 700MHZ PIII and 256 meg ofram and still play + record at the same time. Mediaportal needs at least a 2.4ghz Celeron and 512 meg ram AND a direct X 9 video card.

Re:Win32 version

[indifferent children]

Has anyone noticved that when a post ends in "Bye bye karma" or "So much for my karma", etc, it actualy gets moderated up?

Then why didn't you score some free karma, by ending your post that way?

Of course, this suggestion is going to trash my karma.

Re:Win32 version

[TwilightSentry]

No, you just (probably) browse with your threshold above -1; out of all the ones that say that, you only see the good ones.

Re:Win32 version

[Millenniumman]

I do browse at -1, and can comfirm what he said. Generally they make comments that are non-/.groupthink, which gets them modded up by a lot of moderators.

On a side note, I just figured out how to do the funny accent thingy on any letter with the option key. ààèù

Heh, so much for my karma.

Re:Win32 version

[mmmbeer]

I've tried creating a VMWare Player Ubuntu MythFrontend installation. The frontend running in vmware took up so much CPU (on an Athlon X2 4600) that you could code while watching, but compiling or playing WoW would make it skip. I didn't put much work into trying to optimize it considering it seemed a halfgineered solution.

There was a Google Summer of Code project this year asigned to Mike Woods to get the frontend to run on Win32 (it actually did for a while, long time ago). Last message from him said he was trying to get QT to play nice with windows DLLs and didn't appear to have libmyth compiling yet. He disappeared after that.

A Year of MythTV

[feld]

I've been running MythTV for about a year now and let me tell you -- TV can't get any better.

I have the shows I want whenever I want them. Sure, sure, you can do this with Tivo. But can you also watch those recorded shows over your home network on other PCs? Burn to DVD? My MythTV box also is my torrent box, fileserver, IRC proxy, IMAP server....

Let's put it this way -- more features than Tivo, and they can't control what you do with it. Go ahead, skip all the commercials you want. Keep your recordings as long as you want. The Man can't keep you down when you're running this system.

Also, when that commercial flag becomes law (I think it's still up in the air), MythTV plans to use it to identify commercials and intentionally skip them. Eat that, capitalist pigs ;)

Re:A Year of MythTV

[grasshoppa]

You missed some of the best features; Video storage.

I burn a backup of my dvds, store them on my myth box. Watch them whenever I want, with just the click of a button.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Neo Minder]

Last time I tried using a tuner card with my digital cable I was only able to get upto channel 100 or so. Nothing above that came in. Is this still an issue? If so, how do you work around it?

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Erwos]

Problem is, TiVO isn't really their main competitor in that space - that honor goes to Windows Media Center Edition.

I'd also point out that I've installed MythTV on several boxes in the past year, and I'm not nearly so ecstatic about it as you. Doing a secure setup is an absolute pain in the neck if you want to use that fancy backend/frontend architecture, and only slightly less so if you keep everything on the same box. I also found performance and stability less than I would have preferred - not bad, mind you, but not really all that amazing, either. The protocol changes were the most frustrating, though - I had embedded extenders become unusable frequently because the MythTV folks would change protocols often.

This is not to say WMCE is all peaches and cream, because it's not - but for people who can tolerate its limitations (which aren't terribly bad - yet), the easy setup and relatively cheap (compared to a new PC) Media Center Extenders give it some appeal.

I sound like an MS shill, I know, but for all of MythTV's strengths, it's not for everyone.

-Erwos

Re:A Year of MythTV

[djrogers]

Sure, sure, you can do this with Tivo. But can you also watch those recorded shows over your home network on other PCs? Burn to DVD?

Not to rag on Myth, but yes you can... I watch TiVo recorded programs on my Mac and Windows boxes over the net, burn them to DVD, and with a little hacking (I'd hardly call running a bash script hacking though) I can stream video to my tivo from any PC on my network. All of this without DRM.

Now, back to Myth - I'm sure it's a great application, and I'd probably be using it right now if it werent for the lack of HDTV options on it. I don't get any OTA HDTV where I am, so all HD must come from cable or sat. Now I know most cable cos don't encrypt basic cable HD streams today, but they can and will, at which point my myth box would be obsolete. Same thing with firewire from a cable box - if I can get the right one from my cable co, and as long as they're not encrypting the feed it'll work, but that's not gonna last. Any more permanent HD recording option would require cablecard...

I'm afraid that Myth is one of those techs that is headed for self-destruction at the hands of the content delivery companies and their love of DRM.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[jidar]

Security? What? How is it hard? I mean if you're really that worried about it make the whole thing an unrouted private network. You can access it through a second NIC on your workstation if you must.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Moofie]

Cool. How do you view the shows on your Mac?

Re:A Year of MythTV

[WwonderLlama]

That's a function of your cable. Channels up to 100 are broadcast in analog (a normal TV will pick them up too). Channels above 100 require a Digital Receiver (e.g. Cable Box) to wach on a normal TV or VCR... or on MythTV. If you wanted to record channel 130 on a VCR, you'd have to tune your Cable Box to channel 130, then hit record on the VCR. The same thing goes for MythTV. But, Myth makes this more automatic. When properly configured, the MythTV box will change the channel on your Digital Cable box and start recording.

Basically, anything you can record with a VCR, you can record with MythTV (and MythTV has much more functionality ;)).

Re:A Year of MythTV

[BRTB]

Digital cable (the channels above 80 or so, usually) is made of MPEG2 encoded streams, usually with an encryption layer on top; your normal tuner card won't be able to see these. Your options to record digital cable are:

1. use an external cable box, with either an IR blaster or serial cable to send the channel-change signals. Sometimes you can get a firewire stream from the cable box instead, that depends on your local cableco's equipment.
   
2. grab a PCHDTV card which will be able to tune in only unencrypted streams. Check the HDTV forums on avsforums.com to see what streams these will be in your area. In my area, it can pick up the rebroadcasts of the digital air-broadcast channels and that's about it.
   
3. this is the I-don't-think-it-exists option: find a tuner card that supports the CableCard standard and will output an unencrypted video stream MythTV can work with, which is highly unlikely and would probably give most TV and movie content providers a heart attack if they knew about it.
   

Re:A Year of MythTV

[martin_b1sh0p]

Sure, sure, you can do this with Tivo. But can you also watch those recorded shows over your home network on other PCs? Burn to DVD?

Why yes you can actually. Don't get me wrong even though I'm a Tivo user, I can appreciate MythTV (and I'm thinking of switching someday), but I just wanted to point out that you can do those things with Tivo as well.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[nizo]

What hardware are you using (specifically, which tuner card(s))? And are you doing TV out, and again with what specific hardware?

Re:A Year of MythTV

[JWW]

Cool. How do you view the shows on your Mac?

You have a couple of different options. You can run the frontend for Myth on the Mac, or you can get the mpeg-2 decoder for quicktime, nfs mount you mythbox location for your shows and watch your shows in frontrow.

The frontend is my favorite approach because then you get the wonderful benefit of automatic commercial skip.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Moofie]

Very cool indeed. I haven't motivated myself to find a solution for decrypting the mpeg streams. Do you happen to have a link to that frontend?

Thank you!

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Mike Bridge]

But can you also watch those recorded shows over your home network on other PCs? Burn to DVD?

yes. yes.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Lumpy]

Sure, sure, you can do this with Tivo. But can you also watch those recorded shows over your home network on other PCs? Burn to DVD?

tivo can with lots of hacking and/or spending money for "home network option" or you can buy a replayTV and do it without anything special.

Things I want from myth that I have on my windows based Mediaportal... Podcasts. I should be able to subscribe to "channel frederator" and simply watch it's episodes... mediaportal this works perfectly... mythtv is much harder or I need to shove a hand modified bashpodder in the background and hope the files are in a format that I can watch.. Myth still uses mplayer for playback right?

Re:A Year of MythTV

[grasshoppa]

Actually, just using a plain old nvidia card with TV out. Some config tweaks, and it outputs to the TV. The TV is of pretty poor quality, however, so any signal loss isn't noticed.

One of these days I'm actually going to drop the coin on a decently sized monitor ( 20in+ ), and just go that route for TV.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[bouchecl]

Capture card: Hauppauge PVR series (150, 250, 350, 500) are the gold standard for SD. TV out: nVidia FX5200 with the proprietary driver works fine. It's dirt cheap too.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Lumpy]

Comparing WMCE to mythtv is like comparing a burning car in a junkyard to a new fararri. Windows Media center edition is 100% pure unadulterated crap. it sucks so bad that it spawned people to build things like Mediaportal that blow away every bit of MCE in every possible way. I have helped convert many Windows Media Center machines from the buggy as hell Media center to Media portal + XP pro and gave the users more features, higher stability and removed ALL the damned MCE DRM it adds to your recordings.

Mythtv is far superior and wows the hell out of people... even the Diehard windows guys drop their jaws when I plug into CATV and start tuning the digital Cable channels directly... something that is 100% impossible under windows because of "safety" features built in the driver.

I personally prefer mediaportal, but nobody in their right mind can like Media Center edition.. ot simply sucks and feels half done in every part of it.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[russotto]

Current FCC rules do not allow broadcast stations to encrypt, nor do they allow the cable companies to encrypt the local broadcast feeds ("basic cable").

Re:A Year of MythTV

[absoluteflatness]

I'm afraid that Myth is one of those techs that is headed for self-destruction at the hands of the content delivery companies and their love of DRM.

This must be one of those new kinds of self-destruction where other people do it to you, right?

Re:A Year of MythTV

[jerkychew]

Well, it's all a matter of what you want. Like most OSS vs closed software, the question comes down to: How much is your time worth, and how much flexibility do you want?

You could run Tivo and have a quick setup, nice interface, and good support. But you gotta pay for the subscription, and you can't (legally) remove the DRM from the recordings or push anything from your PC to your tivo other than .tivo files.

You could run MCE with a little more tweaking. You could view movies stored on your server from your MCE box, and view, record, and archive TV shows at your whim. But, MCE has a very narrow list of supported hardware, you have the bloat of XP, and as with Tivo, the recordings are huge files, with no built in way to transcode (convert to a different format) files on the fly.

Or, you could use MythTV. You have a wide array of hardware to choose from. Setup is a pain in the ass, even following the Holy Grail of MythTV installs. After you install Myth, you still have to get the whole frontend / backend thing working, as well as a million other tweaks here and there (remote control, zap2it configuration, transcoding settings, etc., etc.). But, if you're succesful, you have a box that does everything you'd want it to... Records tv shows and transcodes them to smaller files, keeps them on a dedicated server if you want, plays all your music and other video files no matter where on the network they're stored, and as of this new release (which I haven't tried out yet; I'm still battling 0.19-fixes), the ability to burn straight to DVD.

I've used XP MCE, Tivo, Xbox Media Center, and I'm just finalizing my MythTV install. I can't tell you which is best yet, as they all have their hits and misses, just like most software packages.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Monkey]

Mediaportal that blow away every bit of MCE in every possible way

Not entirely true. Mediaportal cannot stream video to the Xbox 360. This is an important feature for a lot of people who own this console.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Erwos]

I meant screwing around with mySQL and setting up the access to that in a secure fashion. Not everyone is a database administrator, and making that a pre-requisite for a good install is absolutely idiotic.

-Erwos

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Mr. McGibby]

hope the files are in a format that I can watch.. Myth still uses mplayer for playback right?

I am unfamiliar with MythTV but am I misunderstanding or are you implying that mplayer is somehow lacking in its format support? That doesn't make alsmost ANY sense. mplayer is probably the most compatible linux video player out there. I have yet to find something that it *doesn't* play. Whereas WMP/Quicktime/(insert windows player here) barfs on many of the files I try to play.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[JWW]

No link. You can find info about it at http://wiki.mythtv.org/

That is if the slashdotting is over....

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Moofie]

Right on. I'll check it out and edumacate myself. I've used videolan client for playback of misc. other crap, but it hadn't occured to me that myth's frontend would also play nice with encrypted Tivo recordings.

Thanks again!

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

... would probably give most TV and movie content providers a heart attack if they knew about it.

Good! Then maybe their successors will have their heads screwed on properly.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[RedWizzard]

The protocol changes were the most frustrating, though - I had embedded extenders become unusable frequently because the MythTV folks would change protocols often.

In the last year (before today) there has been one protocol change AFAIK - when 0.19 was released in February. Were you using development versions?

Re:A Year of MythTV

[taer]

I plug into CATV and start tuning the digital Cable channels directly... something that is 100% impossible under windows because of "safety" features built in the driver.

How do you do this? What capture card supports that?

Re:A Year of MythTV

[modemboy]

Firewire capture from the Motorola DCT 6200 cable box or a Scientific Atlatic one that I can't remember the model number. At least I assume that is what he is talking about. Works great provided your cable company doesn't use 5c encrytion on the channels.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Kev Vance]

I've used a pcHDTV HD-3000 to tune digital cable without a cable box. It's the same 256-QAM as the HDTV channels. Comcast has been encrypting more and more "regular" channels where I live, so this isn't as useful as it once was.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[profplump]

But can you also watch those recorded shows over your home network on other PCs? Burn to DVD?

Maybe not with Tivo, but you can with ReplayTV, and it doesn't even take any hacking.

That being said, my next PVR system will be computer-based, rather than Tivo/Replay/etc. Forget this whole "insert DVD" thing -- I want all my media online and available from any playback device in the house.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[jedidiah]

>> Sure, sure, you can do this with Tivo. But can you also watch those
>> recorded shows over your home network on other PCs? Burn to DVD?
>
> Why yes you can actually. Don't get me wrong even though I'm a
> Tivo user, I can appreciate MythTV (and I'm thinking of
> switching someday), but I just wanted to point out that you can
> do those things with Tivo as well.

      Not quite the same thing. On a MythTV, anything you would
want to access is just another file on the network. Nothing
special is required to get something into or out of a Myth.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[Lumpy]

No. the Hauppanage ATSC digital tuner card. windows drivers will not tune cable tv QUAM channels. under linux it will with ease.

record digital cable WITHOUT digital cable box. works great. and is not possible under windows and MCE

Re:A Year of MythTV

[ookaze]

Problem is, TiVO isn't really their main competitor in that space - that honor goes to Windows Media Center Edition

WinMCE is not a competitor either, as MythTV is not a shrink-wrapped product.

I'd also point out that I've installed MythTV on several boxes in the past year, and I'm not nearly so ecstatic about it as you

You're the first person I hear not being ecstatic about the power of his working MythTV box. Perhaps because you have several ?

Doing a secure setup is an absolute pain in the neck if you want to use that fancy backend/frontend architecture, and only slightly less so if you keep everything on the same box

BS, the secure setup is completely orthogonal to MythTV. And you have to use the backend/frontend no matter what. And you dare talk about security when involving a Windows version in the comparison ?

I also found performance and stability less than I would have preferred - not bad, mind you, but not really all that amazing, either

What does that mean ?!!!
Sorry, but no Windows program is as efficient and stable as MPlayer/FFMPeg to play videos and audios, and FFMPeg is what MythTV uses internally.

The protocol changes were the most frustrating, though - I had embedded extenders become unusable frequently because the MythTV folks would change protocols often

BS and FUD. YOU decided to use devel versions of MythTV frequently, and now you dare complain.
Releases are very infrequent, the latest (0.19) is more than 6 months old !! Is that what you call "frequently" ?

This is not to say WMCE is all peaches and cream, because it's not - but for people who can tolerate its limitations (which aren't terribly bad - yet), the easy setup and relatively cheap (compared to a new PC) Media Center Extenders give it some appeal

Got to be kidding right !!
This has NO appeal, compared to :
- skipping commercials
- automatic programming
- transcoding
- all the powerful management options
- Music, games, gallery, ...
- Reads every video and audio format
- reliable : I can go out on vacations and be sure it won't fail any recordings.

Re:A Year of MythTV

[BLKMGK]

MFSFTP - yup just another file on my network... ;-) A hacked TIVO is pretty powerful although in the end Myth has more potential since it's on general hardware. Unfortunatly Myth isn't nearly as easy to setup IME as most would like. My DTIVO is pretty close to an appliance, not so a Myth box from what I gather. Bad enough I'm always tweaking my hacked XBOX, do you REALLY want to be doing this for what could be the primary entertainment device in your home? A good way to get the whole family mad at you! :-O

what about freevo?

[Anonymous Coward]

has anyone a link comparing mythtv to freevo?
or any unofficial news on freevo 2.0 development?
Tanks

Re:what about freevo?

[Tack]

or any unofficial news on freevo 2.0 development?

The unofficial news is that it's progressing, but slowly, as dischi (the other core developer) and I have day jobs and little time. Story of every OSS developer's life. We're looking to release a preview before the end of the year. (dischi says late October but I'm thinking early December.)

But we have set the bar pretty high. In terms of eye candy, we hope not to disappoint. (Although we'll need someone with artistic talent to do a nice theme once the canvas engine is ironed out.) For some preliminary eye candy (which is not what the final product will look like), see this video.

Any word on knoppmyth?

[Churla]

Any word on when this build will be on a Knoppmyth ISO?

Re:Any word on knoppmyth?

[King_TJ]

I'd like to know that too, because I don't bother with MythTV upgrades until it comes out as Knoppmyth on an ISO. Maybe it's just the nature of my particular setup, but it took me *weeks* of tinkering and pouring over message threads to get my Myth box working exactly like I wanted it to. I would have just given up in frustration if the main "core" of the thing wasn't made easier to get going via Knoppmyth.

In the past, it seemed like it took the Knoppmyth developers at least 1-2 months to release a new ISO based on a Myth update though, so this isn't something I'd really expect to see from them in the next few days or anything.

Re:Any word on knoppmyth?

[edmicman]

Also, how much is involved with upgrading an existing knoppmyth box to a newer version? I set up knoppmyth maybe 6 months ago, and still have work to do, but the basic things I want it to do are working and working great. Seems like when I was setting things up and tried "upgrading" and it blew away all of my settings - not just the mythtv settings, but VNC, openssh, samba shares, all were gone after running their "upgrade". Maybe I just did it wrong?

Re:Any word on knoppmyth?

[emil10001]

Shouldn't you be able to apt-get the updates? I've used Knoppmyth a little bit, and it comes with apt-get installed. Something like:

apt-get update (or upgrade? check man page) mythtv mythtvfrontend etc ...

Re:Any word on knoppmyth?

[Bo'Bob'O]

I completely agree. Anyone here who says that this is ready for public consumption is nuts. I may not be close to an advanced Linux user, but setting up MythTV was an enormous hassle. Eventually, thinking I had a handle on it I recommended it to a friend, and it was horrible. IVTV kept crashing the system and now and again he'd lose power, corrupting the database even if nothing was being recorded. If anything goes wrong with the MySQL configuration, how much work is that trying to research and resolve the problem for people that have no experience with database administration? This is not something ready for the average person in any sense of the word.

However, this has improved over time, and the pre-made packages are getting better. Another big help was my PVR250 worked nearly "out of the box" in SuSE 10.1 which I highly recommend for people that are using their machines for more then a DVR.

Re:Any word on knoppmyth?

[pongo000]

Funny, my experience was just the opposite: Several hours with Knoppmyth, and nothing to show for it (it's almost like a striptease, working with Knoppmyth: You get so close to the goods, but when you actually reach for them, they're no longer there!)

MythTV on Ubuntu took a goodly number of hours to set up, but once it was done, I had the real goods...

Re:Any word on knoppmyth?

[cesman]

I'll probably have diffs available later this evening.... However, I won't have a new ISO until after 2.6.18 has been released and it has been tested.

ya rly

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mythtv.son.org/tiki-index.php should help. I don't think you'll find it under ports.

Insert subject

[Klaidas]

This article is misterious: the reader is anonymous even if he doesn't say anything that could be [insert-bad-reaction]. And the dept is "build your own" Build my own install? o.O
Anyway, I allways wanted to try it out but didn't ever download it. I guess it's the right time!

Re:Insert subject

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

I would recommend this excellent guide for installing it on Fedora. I use FC3/myth at home currently, and it works wonders.

Re:Insert subject

[Thumper_SVX]

Bear in mind though, that despite Axel Thimm's best efforts, it might be a few days before truly stable RPMs are available through APT or YUM. I'm going to hold out for the weekend or next weekend and do the upgrade.

Yes, I've been running it on FC3 for well over 18 months now, and I used that same guide for the setup. Despite a few stumbles in my setup (serial connection to satellite receiver etc.) it worked like a champ first time. It just got better with 0.19 and now I'm really excited about the 0.20 changes.

Re:i don't understand

[ISoldMyLowIdOnEbay]

I currently have a patched version of 0.19 with DVB-T radio support (which has been merged into 0.20 - excellent). So I can record the radio too, and receive the broadcast programme guide. Er, and save to disk should I so wish.

Has been excellent for recording this seasons Proms concerts - for those of us in the UK, anyway. Time to shake the neighbours up with Rite of Spring again...

Seconded!

[drewzhrodague]

Seconded! MythTV is friggin' awesome. It eats the commercials, shares the shows over the network (NFS and SMB), lets me dump my MP3s onto it for playing, supports multiple heads (and backends), and more. I don't even use half the features of the software, and it still blows me away.

I'm using KnoppMyth, and was totally amazed how easily everything installed. Yes I did have to tweak LiRC, and a few other things.

I'm getting ready do build another unit into my house, and look forward to the extra features in the new version.

PVR for me

[drewzhrodague]

I have to pipe-up again, and say that MythTV is awesome. If you've got a tuner card, and a spare box, totally check it out. IT EATS COMMERCIALS, plays DVDs, MP3s, does a photo album, and other things that other units don't do, or don't do well.

It even has support for MAME.

Re:Figures

[jdunn14]

Yeah, seriously, I just set up my myth 0.19 box YESTERDAY.

Controlling Cablebox?

[Doc Ruby]

Can MythTV control my existing cablebox (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3250)? It's got a USB port, what looks like a smartcard slot, and analog+digital audio/video outs.

If I could use the cablebox's tuner, maybe I would need only a video digitizer, or even just transcoder. It would be great to use the cablebox to covert digital video signals to TV. I've already got the cablebox and TV, I'd like to spend that money on better quality for the parts I actually require.

Re:Controlling Cablebox?

[FireFury03]

Can MythTV control my existing cablebox (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3250)?

You can tell Myth to fire up an external program to change channel - I have a shell script to send IR commands to my Sky box.

Re:Controlling Cablebox?

[WPIDalamar]

I control my external cablebox with an IR emitter I bought for something around $8. Essentially, the myth box pretends it's a remote control for the cable box.

Re:Controlling Cablebox?

[SvetBeard]

Can MythTV control my existing cablebox (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3250)? It's got a USB port

You basically have to Google around for more information specific to your setup, but MythTV can control external boxes (by calling external scripts). You'll need either an IR blaster or a proper cable and know how to interface with your cablebox's USB port. Don't forget that you'll also need A/V in on the tuner card.

It can be frustrating, though. I have DirecTV now. The box has a USB port, but it requires a USB-to-serial converter (for some reason). Another user wrote a script to tune the channels, but I haven't been able to get it to work yet. It doesn't help that I haven't had time to tinker with the box for several months, though. IR blasters are notoriously fickle, but you may be able to find better support for them.

If you have the option, it's easiest to just use a direct line in from the cable. MythTV can then control the tuner card directly essentially out of the box.

For all the information to get a working Myth box using Fedora Core, check out http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php/

Re:Controlling Cablebox?

[lobosrul]

I dont know that the USB port does anything. However you should have a firewire port on that box (I do). The way i capture video with it is thru a program called SageTV. However its a rather "advanced" install, one must manipulate the stream coming from the box with an external program. You have to dig around the forums to figure out how to do it. Then you only get true digital channels (incl Hi def). Thats channel 101+ with Comcast. Then they can decide (at random it seems) to 5C encrypt a channel. For instance I can watch ESPN-HD fine, but not ESPN2-HD. And not HBO. Most other channels work incl locals. They do have a linux version in dev. I dont know how far along it is.

Re:Controlling Cablebox?

[LazyBoy]

I believe that's one of the boxes Myth can control via firewire.
If not, you'll need an IR emmiter (Tivo would need this too).

LB

Cablecard

[a_greer2005]

Will Myth ever support Cablecard? it is a better (imho) platform than WMCE but I and my friends still lease the catv MOTO DVRs because it is the only way to decrypt HD channels like ESPN, and watch sports subscriptions like NHL Center Ice., so untill cablecard is supported in these things, it is prettu useless for anyone without a tower and an antenna.

Re:Cablecard

[chundo]

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Motorola_DCT- 25xx

Re:Cablecard

[tji]

It's doubtful that any open source application will be able to use cablecard because of their usage restriction requirements. If it is possible in the future, it would have to also include a bunch of restrictions to MythTV functionality (i.e. the data cannot be unencrypted on the system, so all the editing, transcoding, sharing type stuff is out of the question).

But, as it is today, my MythTV box works well with all my local channels via HD Cable. The one channel I would really like to be able to access is ESPN-HD, but it is encrypted.. so no luck.

Of course, Windows Media Center does not support CableCard either. In fact, WMCE doesn't even support QAM Cable HD. A future version is supposed to support cable/cablecard, but we'll see what kind of requirements/restrictions that brings along.

In any case, I don't think I'll be moving over to WMCE no matter what they offer. I can't see supporting that level of DRM, which effectively locks in Microsoft and the big studios into the positions of power over my hardware.. No thanks, I don't care enough about TV to go for that.

Re:Cablecard

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Will Myth ever support Cablecard?

Doubtful, unless some hardware manufacturer builds a CC-equipped tuner that can be plugged directly into a PC. Unfortunately there probably isn't a whole lot of demand for that, at least not currently, so the chances of seeing one any time soon are probably pretty slim...

That's the only reason I'll consider buying one of the new HD TiVo's (aka Series 3) that should be released soon. Rumor has it that TiVo will be announcing it as early as tomorrow. The downside is that it'll be expensive, at least initially. The upside is that it comes with 2 HD tuners and also support for external storage. On top of that I have a really old Series 1 with lifetime support that I'll be able to transfer to the S3 so no monthly service fees for me.

Re:Cablecard

[SkiItIfYouCan]

I think you are wrong about transfering the service. I believe the lifetime service option is for the life of the box, not transferable to other Tivos. Sorry.

Re:Cablecard

[Drakonian]

Can you clarify something for me?

I'm actually building a Myth box right now and one of my goals is to record NHL Center Ice. I don't even have digital cable yet, just analog, so I'm a little unclear on it.

How come you can't use the Coax-out (or composite or S-Video or whatever) of the Set Top Box and keep your Myth box always on Channel 3, and record whatever output? I had assumed I'd be able to record Center Ice that way. Do you mean not being able to record it in HD? I guess that does make sense. But you should be able to record Std Def right?

Thanks!

Re:Cablecard

[Iphtashu Fitz]

I think you are wrong about transfering the service.

Any TiVo that has a lifetime subscription purchased on or before January 21,2000 is eligible for a one-time transfer to a new TiVo, including the S3. Check out the post here on the TiVo forum by a TiVo employee.

Re:Cablecard

[LaRoach]

You can do exactly that, (with some caveats). If you have analog cable and NHL Center Ice is not scrambled then (assuming you have a supported tuner, PVR-150 is my current fave) you can just plus the cable right into the tuner card and you're done.

If NHL Center Ice is premium then you will need to take either the svideo (and audio) or the coax outputs and run them into the card. Some method of controlling the box will be needed, either through a serial port or using IR.

To give you a specfic example: I have a myth box with two PVR-150's. Standard analog cable goes into the coax input on each tuner. I also have an older DirectTV tuner that is serially controlled through a perl script (directv.pl, oddly enough). That runs into the Svideo/audio inputs on one of the tuner cards. The myth will select the needed input automagically.

I also put the Direct TV box as a lower priority for recording. That way if something comes on that is available on analog and DirectTV it'll record off the analog side so I can still watch the direct tv stuff rather than tie up that tuner needlessly.

Note: With this setup I can still only record two things at once, even with the three inputs. I probably watch too much TV anyway.

Re:Cablecard

[Drakonian]

OK, awesome. Thanks for the clarification. I beleive it will be scrambled, and will need the outputs of the STB.

I didn't know that Myth could select the right input automagically. Cool.

I don't have HD yet, but you won't be able to record HD coming out of the S-Video of the STB right? If it outputs DVI or HDMI and there were a tuner card that took that as an input, maybe it would work. Or can you get HD from the FireWire?

Re:Cablecard

[LaRoach]

Correct, you'll only get nice standard def out of the svideo port. From what I've read the requirements to encode hidef would take a $2K (US) capture card, drivers, etc.

The way myth selects inputs (in my case) is based on your Zap2it listings. If you're not in the US YMMV.

In theory if your STB has firewire output you can capture the hidef stream from that, as long as it's unencrypted. If you do that you'll need a pretty meaty system to decode. Nvidia based video card, that sort of thing.

If you haven't been digging there already check out:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users /

Lots of good info there. I don't know how far along you are, but if you are not to the point of having loaded the OS you may take a look at KnoppMyth. Not cutting edge but *very* nice compared to rolling your own. OTOH, if you want to do specialized stuff (my myth box also runs Asterisk) you'll be be doing your own build.

Re:Cablecard

[spisska]

OK, awesome. Thanks for the clarification. I beleive it will be scrambled, and will need the outputs of the STB. I didn't know that Myth could select the right input automagically. Cool.

I don't have HD yet, but you won't be able to record HD coming out of the S-Video of the STB right? If it outputs DVI or HDMI and there were a tuner card that took that as an input, maybe it would work. Or can you get HD from the FireWire?

For something like the NHL package, you'll definitely need to use the STB. Also, not all (actually relatively few) digital channels are HD.

However, the S-video feed will give you a much cleaner signal than the coax (RF) feed will.

For firewire, you'll likely only get the OTA broadcast channels in HD over firewire -- others, like HBO-HD and ESPN-HD will be encrypted.

There are no tuner cards that accept component, DVI or HDMI inputs. Firewire works because the broadcast standard is compressed and basically dumps MPEG-2 data direct to your disk at about 7-8 GB per hour. HD data over DVI or HDMI is uncompressed and runs about 30+ GB an hour -- a rate that your system would be unable to cope with.

You can use MythTV to control your STB (change channels) through a serial or firewire connection (if you're lucky and the STB supports it), or by using an IR blaster.

A fairly typical setup for what you're describing would be two tuner cards -- one with a cable feed going straight into it and handling analog channels, the second connected with S-video and audio to the STB, which is controlled by IR blaster.

There are all kinds of instructions on how to do all these things on the MythTV wiki (not linking to it here because it's struggling under /. and digg effects, but google is your friend).

Good luck

Re:Cablecard

[Balthisar]

Neat trick! I didn't know it would select the right input automatically. I have dual 500's, one set for two cable channels, and the other for one cable and one SVHS (DirecTV in my case, too, also set for lower priority). So, only four input sources. Sounds like I could use the second card for a total of three sources (two simultaneously). Not that I've ever had need to record from five sources at once...

I also have an HD card that I was going to sell on eBay... now I'm thinking of reinstalling it. It works beautifully for the six QAM channels I get, but only on the PC with the high-def. I use Xboxes for front ends, and they don't handle the HD. I guess I could downsample; that'd still be better quality than the analogue cable, maybe better than the DirecTV signal since there's no analogue conversion.

The funny thing...

[Otter]

I remember when using beta versions of software seemed super-cutting-edge, and <1.0 software was something almost no users had ever seen.

Nowadays, thanks to Netcscape and Google, beta is the final state of software. And after years of Linux, an escalation to 0.20 is a perfectly reasonable user upgrade.

Re:The funny thing...

[Millenniumman]

I expect this trend to continue:

2006: Release software is called beta
2007: Release software is called alpha
2008: Release software is called pre-alpha
2009: Release software is called initial checkin
2010: Release software is called first barely recognizable program
2011: Release software is called first line of code
2012: Release software is called mock up screen shot
2013: Release software is called beginning of project
2014: Release software is called clear plan
2015: Release software is called vague idea
2016: Release software is called sci-fi movie technology
2017: Release software is called unthought of concept
2018: Caught up in our ridiculous product versioning, robots conquer humanity. Fortunately, they're running Windows, so they all BSOD and we win.
2019: The robots find an OpenBSD CD, we are reconquered
2020: The robots' trusted computing modules turn them off for running a non-windows OS, we win.

Re:The funny thing...

[miro f]

meanwhile microsoft continues to do the opposite

2006: Beta software is called release
2007: Alpha software is called release
2008: Pre-alpha software is called release ...

DVB recordings with dishentwork are awesome.

[guantamanera]

I been loving it since.19. I have a DVB pci card a dishnetwork smartcard, and I can record digitaly with all and AC3 sound. I wish I could do that with directv, but linux does not have DSS support. There are DSS tuners, but they just work with windows. Other than that mythtv is awesome.

Re:DVB recordings with dishentwork are awesome.

[willow]

Can you give specifics on your setup? What dish equipment/connections are you using? I'm wanting to upgrade my Dish setup and would love to pipe dish network output into my Myth box (dual DVB ATSC tuners). TIA.

Re:DVB recordings with dishentwork are awesome.

[carl67lp]

Indeed, I'm also quite interested. I doubt it can do HD recording (or can it?), but I'd be quite interested to know more. I want to simplify things around the house, and do so at a minimal cost--the $199 lease upgrade fee for a new HD PVR from Dish is a bit much.

Re:DVB recordings with dishentwork are awesome.

[WwonderLlama]

MythTV can record HD to the extent that Linux-based hardware allows. Currently, that means OTA (Over-the-Air) broadcast HD is recordable, as is QAM (un-encrypted) over-the-cable HD. Generally, cable companies encrypt all non-OTA channels, so you _have_ to have an HD Cable Box to tune them. If you can get an HD Cable Box that has a firewire output on it (the cable company is _supposed_ to offer these, you might have to demand it), you can use that connection to record HD on MythTV.

I use a PCHDTV3000 HD card, and in my area, I can receive: PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC over my (Adelphia) Cable using QAM.... That's it.

If I bought an antenne and tuned in OTA broadcasts, I may be able to get more, but that's dependent on my geographic location.

So, the easy answer is "it depends". =)

Re:DVB recordings with dishentwork are awesome.

[guantamanera]

yes you can. YOu need a dvb pci card. It can also work with HD, but the settup will be more expensive since there is no DVB-PCI card that does 8PSK with turbo FEC. But you can record HD from the canadian provider. You can buy a cheap DVB-S pci card. I seen twinhan DVB-s sell for about $50usd. But if you want to get HD from dishnetwork that will cost alot around $300. You'll need to buy one of those http://www.genpix-electronics.com/index.php?act=vi ewProd&productId=2 You can find all the info you need at http://dvbn.happysat.org/viewforum.php?f=17

Re:DVB recordings with dishentwork are awesome.

[wackysootroom]

Well the problems with this are:

1. - It's illegal. People are getting busted (mainly dealers at this point)
2. - You need a ROM102 smart card which are going for hundreds of dollars on ebay, also card reader and programmer.
3. - When you buy said smartcard and programmer, youre out hundreds of dollars and
          if the providers do something to lock out the cards or swap them out (which WILL happen), you're out all that money.

I'd suggest waiting or a cardless fix (if one ever does come out) before you spend all your money on the carding equipment. Right now it's impossible to decrypt DN or BEV without the Math CoProcessor on the Narga2 smartcard.

Re:DVB recordings with dishentwork are awesome.

[guantamanera]

You can do this with your legal subscription. A iso programmer is around 10 bucks. If you buy an unlocker then is expensive but you'll only need one if you want to pirate stuff. But like I said you can do this with just your sub card just to watch the channels you subscribe to. And since you just want to read all you need is an iso 7806 card reader which you can buy in ebay for $5.99 plus $3.99 shipping. just search ISO-7816 in ebay. http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-SCM-SCR111-ISO-7816-Smart- Card-Reader-Writer-Serial_W0QQitemZ330027502087QQi hZ014QQcategoryZ51082QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZ ViewItem?hash=item330027502087

MythArchive for me!

[kravlor]

I've been happily running a set of Myth boxen for more than a year now, and while I love the system, the one feature I had been sorely waiting for was an easy way to export to DVD. While a more involved method was possible, I look forward to being able to just create an ISO directly from Myth itself. Keep up the good work!

Re:MythArchive for me!

[scotch]

It's spelled "boxes", asshat.

Re:MythArchive for me!

[ookaze]

I've been happily running a set of Myth boxen for more than a year now, and while I love the system, the one feature I had been sorely waiting for was an easy way to export to DVD. While a more involved method was possible, I look forward to being able to just create an ISO directly from Myth itself.

Even better, I would like to cut the videos and mark chapters from MythTV, before putting the result to DVD.

Digital Cable

[nickmue]

Does MythTV work with digital cable boxes? IE is it possible to record movies from premium channels??

Re:Digital Cable

[WwonderLlama]

Depending on your cable box, yes. Myth will accept any input that a cable-ready TV can, but in order to switch channels to the desired recording, you'll need to get LIRC working with your cable box. (LIRC lets your computer act as a remote control to control your cable box, etc.)

It's one of the technical side-trips you take occasionally, thanks to the cable company.

Re:Digital Cable

[spisska]

Does MythTV work with digital cable boxes? IE is it possible to record movies from premium channels??

Please ignore the comments of folks who don't know any better.

Yes, of course you can record movies from premium channels, just not in HD. Anything that your STB can send to your TV can also be sent to your Myth box.

Since there are no capture cards capable of capturing and recording an unencrypted HD signal (from component, DVI or HDMI ports), there is no way to get encrypted HD MPEG-2 streams to record in Myth. HD broadcasts from OTA sources (ATSC) or HD OTA channels from your cable company (QAMM) are recordable under Myth with the proper hardware, eg pcHDTV cards.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[jridley]

No, but it costs time. I've used Linux as a server OS since Slackware 1.0, and have no problems configuring most things, but to date I've spent three solid days over the last 18 months on various attempts to get Myth working. Hell, I went out and bought components based on recommendations for them being good video card and capture card to use with Myth, and I still couldn't get anything that worked.

The most recent time, after blowing an entire weekend screwing around, I finally restored my Win2K backup that I'd made before I started, installed GBPVR and in about 5 minutes was up and running, and have been happy with that ever since.

What the parent poster meant...

[CyberLord Seven]

...is that MythTV could use a bit of exposure to the great masses of people out there who are completely unaware of this software, yet who could use it to their benefit. The parent understands the purpose of the release notes while observing that something else could help the program more.

Re:What the parent poster meant...

[1u3hr]

MythTV could use a bit of exposure to the great masses of people out there who are completely unaware of this software, yet who could use it to their benefit

The kind of people who need it explained in adspeak aren't going to get very far with installing it anyway.

Re:What the parent poster meant...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

The thing about mythtv(and most gpl software) is the developers really only get/want two things out of development:

1) Better software for them to personally use
2) Experience/enjoyment of devel.

Neither of these are any better or worse based on number of people using the software, so most don't care about marketing. If someone else gets good use out of the software than thats great and they can do with it as they wish(assuming it complies with GPL), but theres no reason to market it.

Re:What the parent poster meant...

[AJWM]

1) Better software for them to personally use
2) Experience/enjoyment of devel.

Neither of these are any better or worse based on number of people using the software,

That's not strictly true.

1) The more people using the software, the more likely (though still a low percentage) it is that some of them will contribute back suggestions (or maybe even patches) for improving the software.

2) That enjoyment is enhanced, at least for some developers, by the knowledge that other people find the software useful.

If neither of those were a factor, why make the project open source in the first place? Just quietly develop it for yourself and don't bother telling anyone.

Re:What the parent poster meant...

[jedidiah]

>> 1) Better software for them to personally use

Except there's one really KEY difference here. This is a turnkey media
system we're talking about here not some variation on diff or yacc.
This is something that is meant to be used FROM THE COUCH by the people
who are developing it.

This isn't just something else to slip into a 20 long chain of character
stream utilities being piped through some shell.

MythTV rules

[Captain_Chaos]

I just finished setting up my home MythTV system. It rocks! I've got my digital cable connected directly to my backend using a PCI DVB-C card, and my projector is connected to my frontend using a DVI cable, so the backend can record the MPEG-2 streams directly to disk with no quality loss whatsoever (and including all the audio and subtitle tracks), and then the frontend can display them on my wall with not a single bit of quality loss in between! Plus it plays my videos and my music, it lets me skip commercial breaks (which it has automatically tagged for me), watch DVD's, play legacy games with MAME, etc., etc.

It really is a fantastic piece of kit. It can be pretty finicky to set up and you need to be prepared to invest some serious amount of time, but it's worth it!

Mac? Please?

[MagerValp]

I really, really, really wish this would run on my Mac, back end and all.

Is no one working on porting it?

Re:Mac? Please?

[Thumper_SVX]

The frontend already runs on Mac, but the backend? Eeehhhhhh... no.

I think the primary reason is that the majority of Mac owners who are interested in this kind of setup are usually the kind who have a Mini for hacking. No encoding capability. Myself, I run a Macbook Pro; no supported encoders there either. To get PCI, you gotta get a Mac Pro; an expensive proposition. Most people who would build a Myth box are building it from commodity hardware or from their own "bits boxes". In other words, doing it on the cheap. Hell, I know I did.

Yes, I know there are firewire encoding boxes, but these don't tend to be well supported by Linux. Porting to OSX and using OSX native APIs would be a significant undertaking.

I think another thing is the average Mac consumer is not the kind to fiddle with this kind of thing. While there are some developers on MythTV that use Macs, I'm not sure there's a large enough community to pull together a port.

Of course, you could start up a Sourceforge project to port it and prove me wrong :)

My feeling is that when the project itself stabilizes a little (note the 0. in the version number... that means we're at least 80 versions from production ;) ) we might see more effort to port it to OSX. At the moment, it's a moving target as much of the API is still "in flux" and will be for some time to come. As I mentioned above, to port to OSX interfaces would not be trivial, and to have to redo it every 3 months because a new version has changed a core piece of code would be a pain in the arse. That's the reason you don't see much activity on a BSD port either... or Windows... though I know some have tried it.

Re:Mac? Please?

[labratuk]

This is a bit of a troll but then again I have no self restraint:

Typical macintosh user. If you want something, roll up your sleeves and do it. The reason there isn't a full macintosh port is that the vast majority of macintosh users just expect to be presented with something. They're consumers after all. The reason unix guys have loads of cool stuff (tm) is they're not afraid of ploughing ahead and doing something for themselves instead of being spoonfed.

It's not called Free software because it's a free lunch.

Re:Mac? Please?

[Anaerin]

Erm... Excuse me parent, but is starting to support recording from Firewire in OSX, and it DOES support FreeBSD. RTFA, and look at the release notes (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Note s_-_0.20). It's all in there:

Added beginnings of firewire capture support for MacOS
and
Fixed FreeBSD compilation

HDTV Lockout

[Krondor]

I love MythTV. I'm very excited to try 0.20 (UPnP especially). It's a great piece of software and IMO handily beats MCE (though I hear BeyondTV puts up a fight). The level of control is great, I absolutely like to OWN my media. I have a looming fear though that poor MythTV is about to get 'shafted' so to speak.

MythTV has HDTV support for broadcast and Cable HD, but lacks a means of decrypting these streams. In fact, PCs in general do at this point, but I suspect that will change. Vista MCE will undoubtedly have encrypted HDTV playback support, Tivo as well (if it doesn't already). How is a free OSS solution like this to compete against imposed proprietary restrictions? I smell a DeCSS debacle all over again. Perhaps it will get cracked. Maybe I can still watch my streams if I subjugate myself to a DMCA violation or two.

Lets face it, another case of a superior product getting kicked to the curb by an industry that likes to wear tinfoil hats at the detriment of its consumers. I guess I have a decision in the future. Use the software I love and watch the shows it can view, or relinquish control impair my viewing experience and broaden my media options. I think I'll stay with Myth, the studios just lost a viewer (though I doubt they'll notice).

Re:HDTV Lockout

[Captain_Chaos]

MythTV has HDTV support for broadcast and Cable HD, but lacks a means of decrypting these streams.

There seems to be a lot of this going around. It must be an American thing, perhaps something to do with ATSC, the DMCA, the FCC or some other three or four letter word? Like I said in another post, I can watch encrypted HDTV channels fine with my DVB-C PCI card (specifically, a Technotrend Budget C-1500). But I think DVB is the European standard.

Re:HDTV Lockout

[Krondor]

...perhaps something to do with ATSC, the DMCA, the FCC or some other three or four letter word? Like I said in another post, I can watch encrypted HDTV channels fine with my DVB-C PCI card...

ATSC was adopted in the US, Canada, and Mexico as opposed to DVB-T. It was originally intended for broadcast signals but has been adopted by US cable operators. ATSC is "on the wire" HDTV in the US as opposed to DVB-C in Europe (I think Japan uses something totally different then US and Europe). DVB is used in the US primarily for consumer Satellite television, DVB-S. ATSC is not used in this instance (but I hear it is still used for Satellite transmission from TV networks (but not to consumers)).

I should have ammended my post above, MythTV can watch terrestrial HDTV (ATSC) broadcasts and some cable HDTV (if unencrypted). However, many channels are encrypted (and I expect this to only increase). Basically you only get network TV in most locations; PBS, ABC, Fox, CBS, WB/UPN, and NBC. The remaining channels are encrypted.

I highly doubt that European broadcasters are not encrypting their premium channels (and likely non-broadcast channels as well). What are you able to watch on your card? Do you have another device feeding it? I suppose you would know better then me, but it really makes me extra depressed to think that just the US, Canada, and Mexico consumers are in this boat (or maybe that gives me hope.. I'm not sure).

I know that Dish networks DVB-S used Nagravision 1 encryption in the US and was cracked in the past. They have been working on adopting Nagrivision 2 and it seems less likely this will be cracked.

Re:HDTV Lockout

[Captain_Chaos]

I highly doubt that European broadcasters are not encrypting their premium channels (and likely non-broadcast channels as well). What are you able to watch on your card? Do you have another device feeding it?

They are encrypting them (in fact in the Netherlands the cable providers have the annoying habit of encrypting almost everything, including the free channels), but a PC with the right equipment can decrypt them just like a set-top box can. I have a DVB-C PCI card with a separate CI card which connects to it, an Alphacrypt CAM that goes in the CI card, and the smartcard that I got from my cable provider goes in the CAM. Note that this is all perfectly legal off-the-shelf hardware. It decrypts all the encrypted channels that are included in my package (including the HD ones, and the MPEG4 ones).

I suppose you would know better then me, but it really makes me extra depressed to think that just the US, Canada, and Mexico consumers are in this boat (or maybe that gives me hope.. I'm not sure).

It does look like that's the current situation. I know of no plans to introduce schemes that would stop PC's from being able to receive encrypted HD content. The cable providers are just now rolling out digital PVR's and HD set-top boxes, with which my setup is compatible, so they're not going to change the way they work anytime soon.

Re:HDTV Lockout

[Krondor]

The cable providers are just now rolling out digital PVR's and HD set-top boxes, with which my setup is compatible, so they're not going to change the way they work anytime soon.

Interesting setup... I wonder if I could use a similar setup with DVB-S and switch to Dish or DirecTV. Thanks for the idea.

One Problem

[ucaledek]

I just dropped my myth box which I had struggled with for the last few months. Admittedly, I didn't know much about Linux beforehand, just the basics so I wanted to use myth as a learning tool. I didn't mind that struggle at all. Setting up in the end was easy and relatively painless once I understood some Perl basics etc. Myth's qualities are not overstated above. Authoring DVDs of recordings was a bit of a hassle, but it seems with those release notes it might have gotten better. I could even archive to DVD all my old VHS easily with the right tuner card! But there are two basic reasons I dropped Myth: 1) I was never happy with the media players available aside from watching archived videos, including DVDs (never got that to work). 2) the picture quality tended to be pretty poor (maybe that's the fault of ivtv? but still can't get myth without drivers). My friend tried two windows alternatives--gbpvr and media portal--and the picture quality for live and recorded TV is leaps and bounds better than anything I could find after hours and hours of tweaking my myth setup. I can't imagine how it would look on a nice TV. Blue lines on the top and bottom of the feed, terribly flat blacks, fuzziness on certain channels pervaded my myth experience and haven't occurred with media portal. I have other problems with media portal and wouldn't mind going back to myth, but it just seems the limitations of the drivers out there really kills the experience for me.

Re:One Problem

[WwonderLlama]

I doubt that MythTV is to blame for the problems you encountered. MythTV can control the recording quality as far as bitrate is concerned, but odd colored lines would be a problem with your IVTV configuration. I don't know what you mean "can't get myth without drivers"... Myth doesn't have drivers for the capture cards, it relies on the hardware's driver, just as Windows-based software does. If the driver is configured incorrectly it can cause all sorts of problems, but luckily most people don't have this type of problem.

Re:One Problem

[LordKronos]

but odd colored lines would be a problem with your IVTV configuration
No, I don't think it was the IVTV config. I had this problem before and solved it. I think the blue was a background color that was in use by one of the other utilities on the box and it would show through on anything that wasn't fullscreen. I could be mistaken, though.

As I said, I fixed this problem before. I wrote down the solution but don't have my notes in front of me at the moment. I'll try to remember to post an update later when I do.

Re:One Problem

[WwonderLlama]

My apologies, I didn't see that you mentioned a fix. I can definately see how a non-fullscreen module (mplayer, xine, etc?) could still show MythTV in the background. However, the poor picture quality could easily be caused by IVTV (as you suggested). IVTV can be a pain when you get into setting it up.. firmware revisions, kernel versions, and driver versions all have to be just right. For anyone experiencing problems, the mythtv-users archives are the best place to start

After rereading your post a couple of times, I think I see what you meant by "can't get myth without drivers"; if the drivers don't work, Myth doesn't work. Gotcha. =)

Re:One Problem

[LordKronos]

My apologies, I didn't see that you mentioned a fix

Actually, what you REALLY didn't see was that I'm a completely different person than the poster you were originally responding to :-) I was just chipping in with a quick little "oooh, I know what he's talking about, and it's not what you are thinking".

Re:One Problem

[JourneymanMereel]

I would think he meant that without drivers, MythTV is useless. So, to him, it doesn't matter if the problem was MythTV or IVTV, it just wasn't working out.

I've found that on my setup, MythTV output (live and recorded) looks just as good as the direct-from-cable feed. I bought the PVR-350 and put it in an old P-III box w/an upgraded hard drive. The best part about the 350 is that it has a hardware MPEG-2 decoder on board and being that it's the same card that did the encoding, it seems highly unlikely that there'd be any encoding/decoding errors. Also, because the card does the encoding and decoding, I was able to get away with a much lower horse power box.

Re:One Problem

[LordKronos]

OK, I have my notes now. Heres how I fixed it on my knoppmyth setup:

edit /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc and append the following 2 lines:

#elimitate blue lines from mplayer by making alpha color black
xvattr -a XV_COLORKEY -v 0

Re:One Problem

[ucaledek]

Right, I'm just saying that the drivers for the cards aren't great imho, and you can't use myth wihtout the drivers.

MythTV light

[claes]

Below is my PVR. I "at" to schedule a program:

#at 18:00
warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh
at> rectv 1 1h simpsons
at> <EOT>
job 18 at 2006-09-12 18:00

#!/bin/sh
 
if [ -z "$3" ]; then
    echo "too few arguments"
    echo "Usage: record-tv channel duration name "
    echo "channel: 1-9"
    echo "duration: 30m, 1h"
    echo "name: simpsons"
    exit 1
fi
 
CHANNEL=$1
DURATION=$2
NAME=$3
 
BITRA TE=4000000
 
VIDEO_DIR=/home/claes/media/video/re cording/
 
FCHANNEL[1]=E5
FCHANNEL[2]=E7
FCHANN EL[3]=SE16
FCHANNEL[4]=E6
FCHANNEL[5]=SE19
FCHA NNEL[6]=SE20
FCHANNEL[7]=SE17
FCHANNEL[8]=SE13
    FCHANNEL[9]=SE14
 
#Set channel
ivtv-tune -teurope-west -d /dev/video0 -c ${FCHANNEL[CHANNEL]}
 
#Set quality
ivtvctl -d /dev/video0 -c bitrate=$BITRATE
 
#Start recording
mkdir -p $VIDEO_DIR #Just in case it does nto work
cat /dev/video0 > $VIDEO_DIR/$NAME.mpg &
 
CAT_PID=$!
# $! is PID of last job running in background.
 
sleep $DURATION
kill $CAT_PID

The resulting simpsons.mpg I play using XBMC.

Google Summer of Code

[Viper_Viper]

Any idea when the Google Summer of Code projects will be included in MythTV? I am guessing .21? These projects are going to be very usefull to MythTV, especially the AutoConfig, Make Myth Multi-user, and the Windows Port. http://code.google.com/soc/mythtv/about.html

Re:Sounds fascinating

[bouchecl]

The amount of difficulty involved depends on the distro you use. I've had good luck with Fedora Core (3, 4 and 5), using binary rpms from atrpms and the nice howto written and updated by Jarod Wilson (http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php). Setting up a backend should not take more than a day, even for someone with limited Linux experience like me. And the setup of a frontend workstation is a matter of yum'ing the rpms and install the various packages. Knoppmyth is a good distro for the Debian fans out there.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[itsdapead]

I've spent three solid days over the last 18 months on various attempts to get Myth working

Ah, a casual user then :-) Took me at least a week (but then I was compiling Gentoo on a diddy 1.2GHz Epia box)

MythTV is complex to set up because it is doing complex stuff - plus its supporting lots of different modes of use (analogue TV, DVB, with/without hardware MPEG are all rather different kettles of fish).

Any free/open (and especially non-windows) media centre is liable to be driver hell - there is not much that developers can do when TV cards rely on firmware "blobs" and manufacturers play musical chairs with chipsets without changing model numbers or packaging - and a media centre relies on so many different drivers.

When MythTV is working it is jolly impressive - the new release sounds like it fills a lot of important gaps (DVD archiving was a glaring ommission).

It does indeed kick ass.

[Orrin Bloquy]

I've had one of these for about five months and while it was a PITA to install, it definitely increased my e-penis with the local LUG. It looks great and is popular in the household.

Is it easy to install? No. Myth isn't an application, it's a platform inside Linux relying on MySQL, Apache, PHP, tuner drivers, lirc drivers, and the willingness to tweak the things which aren't guaranteed to work correctly out of the box (e.g. PHP5 not registering itself as a MIME type with Apache 2, streaming requiring not only hardcoding your box's IP in Myth's settings but having to run a SQL query to update all references to 'localhost').

Daniel Hyams' advice for installing Myth under Ubuntu makes it clear that there's some room for improvement in terms of startup and housecleaning -- creating a system that automatically logs in without passwords, that backs up its own databases, etc. -- and structure (putting /home in a separate XFS partition for faster disc access on large files than ext* can do, resetting Myth's own pointers to this location). It's frustrating to try to rip your own DVDs only to find that this requires opening a terminal and starting a service which isn't normally running. Users of bttv based tuner cards received a nasty shock when the L4TV kernel module maintainers inadvertently wrecked audio support with recent kernel updates.

And yet, even with all the negatives mentioned above, the end result is hella impressive. Your rules for recording can be simple, complex or even regex based. With a Hauppauge card with MPEG2 encoding chips, you can run it on a 450MHz P3.

However, what it needs most is a wrapper installation program which installs the AMP stack, requests a master AM password and configures it into Apache, MySQL and Myth, manages dependencies, establishes services at startup, bypasses login, sets a database backup schedule, ties DVD ripping to the necessary background services, and runs checks to see that Apache and MySQL are behaving themselves.

Re:It does indeed kick ass.

[Afrosheen]

All this and more is yours for the low low price of $0 from Knoppmyth.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[WwonderLlama]

While it's true that not everyone has an easy time of setting up MythTV, the other side is that there are tons of people that have no problems at all getting it working.

My first installs of MythTV went decently well, but I had some hurdles due to the Linux flavor I used. However, there are _great_ guides that walk you through the install. There are also some "install a MythTV system" distrobutions (KnoppMyth, MythDora, etc) that do a basically complete system/Myth install with minimal configuration. And above all, the user community is fantastic. If you have problems, search the mailing list archives (lots of problems have been addressed before). If you can't find an answer, just show us your problem and say "can you help?".

I'd suggest that anyone not comfortable with Linux and mailinglists first attempt an install with Knoppmyth (http://mysettopbox.tv/)(or MythDora). The hardware is autodetected for you, and the forum-based support is very helpful.

MythTV should be included with OS X.

[Anonymous Coward]

Myth TV is exactly the type of application that should come standard with a Mac.

People have been asking for a DVR application to be added to the Mac Mini,
it should be added to all versions of OS X (as well as video in / out jacks for all systems).

Apple could learn a few things from Myth TV.

Re:MythTV should be included with OS X.

[Afrosheen]

Apple and others will never be able to cut a deal with the RIAA and MPAA to make a box this useful. Trust me, by law it's probably guaranteed impossible at this point. It supports doing a ton of things they don't want you to do, like burning DVD discs of recorded content, ripping DVDs to the hard drive, ripping cds to mp3 format, etc. All of it is unencrypted and the dvd ripping step decrypts the disc as it's being ripped.

  It's sad that the laws in this country and others have gotten so restrictive but it's what happens when everyone is distracted with Nascar and football games.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[richardablitt]

Out of the distributions I've tried, Opensuse has been the easiest for me. It just required installing the rpms, then installing the database from the /usr/share/docs directory. After that, mythtv-setup ran without any problems. Ubuntu seems to be stuck at 0.18.1, unfortunately.

Amazing

[King Gabey]

As I surf mythtv.org I can see it slowly being slashdotted into oblivion...

HD Over Firewire

[brunes69]

HDTV support: With supported HD capture card, terrestrial broadcast HD and Cable HD are supported (with the exception of encrypted cable HD channels - which cannot be decrypted on any PC PVR)

It is important to note that if your Digicable provider uses a supported set top box (like the Motorola STBs), you don't need an HD capture card to capture HD. You can grab the raw content right off the box using Firewire.

MythTV fully supports several boxes via firewire, it can even change the channels over the firewire so there is no need for messy IR senders.

Re:HD Over Firewire

[Millenniumman]

Only some of the HD channels are available over firewire, and I am under the impression they are all broadcasted anyway.

Extender is expensive compared to Myth front ends.

[brunes69]

You can get any Xbox from eBay for less than $100 and install MythTV on it using a softmod to use as a Myth front end. It has enough CPU power to do everything except play back HD content (it can upscale DVD to HD fine)...

I would like you to find a Windows media Center Extender for less than $100....

And as far as your protocol issue - ssh into the Xbox/Myth frontend, apt-get update- apt-get upgrade. Done. The front end updates when the back end does.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[uglyduckling]

I've used Linux as a server OS since Slackware 1.0, and have no problems configuring most things, but to date I've spent three solid days over the last 18 months on various attempts to get Myth working.

Hmm... I've had server experience but it sounds like less than you, and I managed to get usable mythtv in under 2 hours. I've been tinkering with it for three weeks since then, but it was working acceptably almost straight away. The main thing you need to do is take a structured approach - if you were putting together a LAMP system you wouldn't mess around with PHP until you knew Apache could serve a static page. Same thing for myth - get known-supported cards and get them working with a standalone TV app, check your sound card is working well, maybe get DVD playback working because that's a known quantity and will test your display drivers, then look at installing myth. I was using DVB-T so followed one of the several howtos I found on google.

The only weird, non-obvious thing I found is that what the configuration GUI calls "video sources" really should be called "channel allocation/listings sources" - although this may be a quirk of DVB and make more sense in analogue (can anyone enlighten me?).

Cataloging with MythTV

[Vancorps]

I'm a little curious if anyone has had any experience with scripting the recording of live content with MythTV? I have a database that I want to use that will determine what the file should be called. Any pointers on this would be greatly appreciated. I thought about doing it with ffmpeg and a perl script but I'm new to both and can't find syntax that will work with more than one tuner at a time. I am trying to capture, encode, and catalog 4 video streams all at once. I've done it with virtual dub but I can't script virtual dub so that won't work for me since I can't catalog them.

Re:Cataloging with MythTV

[mindcrime30]

With the Hauppage PVR cards, making a recording can be as simple as: #cat /dev/video0 >/home/user/recording.mpg
Multiple tuners would be listed as /dev/video1, /dev/video2, etc. and would be completely independent.

There are, or course, one-liner commands for settings inputs or channels. The output file is a standard mpg2 file playable by any modern media player.

Hope that helps you in the right direction. With the Mythtv overhead and schedules etc., it would probably be pretty tough to take over the "middle" layer of Myth, maybe talking directly to the cards would be easier for your particular application?

Re:Cataloging with MythTV

[Vancorps]

The problem is that we're using Osprey cards which output raw video, not mpeg2 unfortunately so I have to have some encode it otherwise I'm looking at an incredible storage overhead. Although with something that simple I could probably do that and pipe it into ffmpeg to re-encode it.

Do you know of a site that references this kind of stuff? I haven't found any resources that tend to give me specific examples, only vague ones.

Thanks for advice though, it does help as I could easily write a shell script for that, the only problem is then getting the proper information from the database. Fortunately it's an Oracle database so linux tools for are easy to come by.

Re:Cataloging with MythTV

[mindcrime30]

Sorry, I don't have any links to sites for that kind of stuff.

I just looked briefly at the Osprey cards, and didn't really see anything implying any kind of low level access like the simple cat device> file.ext stuff that the PVR-x50's allow. That's not to say that it won't work though, if it's a linux device, it's entirely possible that you can just cat the device and pipe it to the capture file. I am not familiar with those cards, however, so your mileage may indeed vary.

In my (somewhat limited) experience with consumer-grade video capture, software compression is evil, and multiple streams will make you wish you had hardware compression, but I do not know what your intentions are with the resulting stream. FFMPEG certainly works, but you better have some serious processor power to keep up if you're doing realtime and multiple streams.

Good luck!

Re:Cataloging with MythTV

[Vancorps]

I do, dual opteron 275 ;) Works beautifully with virtual dub, about 40% utilization while compressing to mpeg2 across all four streams. The biggest trick is io, gotta write in larger chunks to conserve. It works! I'll try out the cat deal with a knoppix cd and see how it goes. They are a regular device that you can reference through /dev/video/video0-3 although I don't know how you'd select which input.

Hopefully I won't need luck, but thanks!

Re:Hope its better then .19

[WwonderLlama]

I've installed Myth from scratch a half-dozen times (different OS flavors, testing configurations, generally tinkering around on my non-operation-environment mythtv box), and I've not had the problems you report. Your problems could possibly relate to your hardware, some odd configuration you have, or even glitches because of package versions of libraries. To be fair, you seem to have had a rough time of it, but from the posts on the mythtv-users mailing list I wouldn't say your results are typical. .18 did, indeed, work great, but .19 also worked flawlessly for me, and I can't wait to try .20.. just have to archive 50 more shows....

Check out MythDora.....

[VorlonFog]

Check out MythDora It will probably be several weeks before it's up to MythTV 0.20, but Dennis and his friends make a sweet ISO of Fedora Core combined with MythTV that uses a menu-driven installation system. It allows you to configure front-end and back-end nodes separately, too. If you've ever tried to download and build MythTV from scratch before, you'll definitely appreciate it.

Priority recording

[Andy Social]

Yes, absolutely. I've seen a number of shows get recorded at 1 am instead of their first showing in order to ensure that I get everything I have scheduled to record, even if it's not the earliest showing of each episode.

Re:Extender is expensive compared to Myth front en

[Erwos]

You can use the Xbox as a media center extender, too. So, yes, I can find one for under $100, as you said.

Your magical apt-get trick only works if you're using Debian. Those of us who are running custom embedded hardware, such as the Hauppauge MediaMVP, really don't get that option.

-Erwos

What would make MythTV better than TiVo?

[Colin Smith]

A full multimedia centre:

Audio:
  Full multimedia jukebox; MP3 shuffle mode with a mood classifier. Choose the mood you're in, or want and it'll find & play appropriate music, with effects.

Video:
  Auto-record tv shows I might like continuously into free space, based on a classification of the title, description, actors, director etc.

Basically, a bit of intelligence on the part of the software. There are a bunch of geek features which frankly don't care about, like watching shows over a network. Tivo is liked because it's incredibly easy.

OSS Versioning

[_Neurotic]

Has anyone else ever wondered why so many OSS projects are afraid to ever reach v1.0? Here's an example of a project that has been in development since 2002. It's undergone cycles of feature additions and bug fixes, and it's just now hitting version 0.20?

Re:OSS Versioning

[k98sven]

Has anyone else ever wondered why so many OSS projects are afraid to ever reach v1.0?

Um, no. Because there is no general meaning of "1.0" and assigning some meaning to it is little more than numerology. In particular with OSS projects.

Moreover, there isn't any general rule for what the requirements are for a "release" with an OSS project. It could be nothing more than a CVS snapshot on a particular date, or in a more well-organized project it might be required to pass a set of regression tests. It might also (or alternately) be preceeded by any number of test releases.

All a higher version number is guaranteed to mean is that it's a newer release. Whatever additional meaning it might have is completely dependent on the project's release criteria.

Version numbering is even less clear. Unless the project has some clear agree-upon definition such as a roadmap, defining exactly which features should be included into what future version number, then the version numbers have absolutely no meaning. If you haven't decided what "1.0" means, then not only is there little significance to the 1.0 release, but there's no significance to any of the previous version numbers either, since you can't quantify how much closer or farther you're getting to an undefined target.

A sane scheme for a piece of library software may define an API and then define the first major release as the first complete implementation of that API, and subsequent minor releases as fixes/improvements that don't involve API changes. But a piece of application software is far harder. In particular with OSS. As the user and developer base grow, the goals usually change repeatedly.

The case of MythTV is even more complex. Not only is it a very popular app, but one where it's terribly difficult to define what the necessary features are. And the support for even 'basic' features is in constant flux as the situation with hardware, drivers and even the video standards themselves change rapidly.

Here's an example of a project that has been in development since 2002. It's undergone cycles of feature additions and bug fixes, and it's just now hitting version 0.20?

So? Would it make you feel better if they'd labeled the same piece of software "0.99"? The number would not be one bit more meaningful, since AFAIK, the MythTV devs have no set goals for 1.0. And you haven't given a definition here either.

But here's a suggestion: If you do have a definite idea of what you think should consitute a 1.0 release, why don't you suggest it to them?

Version numbers are for users (or marketers) anyway. And version numbers that have meaning are for users too lazy to read release notes.

Re:OSS Versioning

[DanQuixote]

It turns out there is a really simple explanation...

There are 2 kinds of people:
--> 1. Those who start their arrays at 1.
--> 1. Those who start their arrays at 0.

MythTV Meme Still Accelerating

[broward]

I predicted a high growth curve for MythTV about 15 months ago. It's nice to see a prediction confirmed, growth rate is still high.

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry =mythtv_meme

Knoppmyth upgrade

[Andy Social]

A Knoppmyth upgrade is actually more of a wipe-and-install system. The scripts maintain your database and media files, but the OS and its various settings are reset to defaults as determined by the Knoppmyth maintainers. This is by design, since it allows them to upgrade from many disparate earlier versions to the latest. It is a drag to re-initialize my SMB and Webmin settings, and reset the password for MythWeb, and re-initialize my LVM volumes... You know, I'm probably not making this sound better for you, am I?

SO, how about, "I feel your pain?"

Re:Knoppmyth upgrade

[edmicman]

Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. Ah well.....guess I'll keep an eye on things. If it gets to the point where I really have to upgrade, I'll probably just wipe it out and start things over. By then, maybe I'll be even more familiar with linux that I can script out most of the setup that I've done. Woohoo!

Happy User

[tsm1mt]

It's been 2 or 3 years since I set up Myth and had it working and I'm still very happy. Current setup is an Athlon 700 with a PVR250 card. My wife can pick out shows she wants and they just get recorded. Moving them to a DVD is a little clunky, but sounds like that might be improved in .20. We record all kinds of stuff, then they get moved to DVD-RWs and they move around the house to TV to TV (or portable DVD player). Movies get archived to DVD-R. I'd like to hook the cable box in and access the hundreds of channels, but it just hasn't been a priority. Recently I found a patch for nuvexport that included a "Mobile" profile. Now, not only can I export to DVD, or VideoCD, or DivX, or variations.. but I can easily export to my Motorola E815 and watch Futuruma on my phone while shopping with the in-laws. I should have an X-box soon to make a silent front-end for one of the TVs. In the meantime, I watch my shows on the Myth box, or on one of my other PCs running a Myth front-end.

Re:Happy User

[theparag0n]

If you think that an xbox will be silent, you have a shock coming!

Re:Happy User

[BLKMGK]

Mine's silent - I replaced the crap stock fan with an 80mm aftermakret fan. TaDa! It's now not possible to hear it over the rest of the AV equipment and XBMC manages the temp so it's not spinning faster than needed. Runs cooler now too...

Getting the TV program is the hassle

[einar2]

As far as I went with the install MythTV looked nice.

However, it dependes on an electronic TV program. And getting this TV schedule depends on where you live. The support in middle Europe is rather lousy. For the German speaking channels a PERL script is used which screen scraps the web page of a TV magazin. Whenever the TV magazin changes there web design... pure joy!

Myth is awesome!

[mindcrime30]

Using Knoppmyth really takes the sting out of setting it up. I built a back-end box with 500GB (~220 hours SD), 3 PVR-150 tuners (USA, Cable), and an HD-3000 card (USA, HD-OTA). It makes my 320 hour TiVo jealous. I don't use the Mame/Weather/DVD/Video file features since it just sits in the basement and records stuff. We watch everything but the 1080/720 HD recordings with a Modded XBox (XBMC + xbmcmythtv), the HD stuff is just getting started for us, but we can watch that on the Ubuntu systems temporarily until I get a better front end box for the HDTV.

Overall, Myth is a very serious contender, not to say that it doesn't need some spit and polish here and there. Better cooperation from hardware companies would certainly help too, especially for TV-Out capabilities and Tuner-Chip-Du-Jour companies (I'm looking at you, ATI and Hauppage...) The web interface is fantastic! How many times have you been at work/school/the office and heard about a new show that you might want to see. You can find and schedule that show from your computer anywhere or even your phone (I use a Treo 650).

Being able to convert recorded shows into XviD, Divx, vcd, etc. is extremely handy too, and works with PSPs, iPods, GP2Xs, Treos, etc. I really don't care to pay $1.99 for a show I already recorded just to get it into the right format to watch on an airplane/train/boat.

Making compilation DVD's of the kids cartoons without commercials is great for those long car trips, as is being able to record the decaying laserdiscs and the occasional 8mm video or VHS tape into DVD's with full menus.

Just my $0.03 (inflation, you know.)

ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder cards support?

[antdude]

Is there still lack of support for ATI's All-In-Wonder cards (9600 and 9800 Pro)? The last time I checked, there was no driver or the TV tuner because ATI didn't open up their drivers. Even MS Windows Media Centers (even Vista RC1) don't support it. From what I read, ATI is not making any more AIW cards. I think the support is going away. :(

Stand alone front end

[StormReaver]

I've been using MythTV for about a month now, and I'm very happy with it. It took a couple hours to get everything worked out on Fedora Core 4. Many thanks are owed to http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/ for the MythTV repository. That guy does an awesome job!

The one thing I haven't found is a stand alone front end that streams the data from the recording box rather than requiring an entire download before playing. It's not a big deal, but it would be nice to have.

Re:Stand alone front end

[Darby]

The one thing I haven't found is a stand alone front end that streams the data from the recording box rather than requiring an entire download before playing. It's not a big deal, but it would be nice to have.

I'm not sure I understand you, but that sounds like exactly what it does.
Just install Mythtv (frontend only if you want) on another machine, run mythtv-setup and point it to the right backend IP.
Then you can watch all the same shows streamed.

Is this not what you want?

Re:Stand alone front end

[Jetson]

The one thing I haven't found is a stand alone front end that streams the data from the recording box rather than requiring an entire download before playing.

MythTV streams all playback content. It has to in order to support diskless frontends. How are you doing playbacks that is forcing a download? What content are you playing and where is it being downloaded from?

Re:Stand alone front end

[smchris]

I know what he means. V. .19 on my file server and watching it from another room with mplayer. Web interface: TV->recorded programs. Click on the program image in Mozilla. Even if you say "open with mplayer" it downloads the entire program to /tmp before starting. It isn't really how I would define "streaming" either.

downgraded to Etch

[MadBrassMan]

Dammit! I guess I picked the wrong day to downgrade from Debian unstable to Etch. Now I'll have to wait for 2 years to use 0.20 if it doesn't make it into Etch.

Perfect Timing

[Arceliar]

I just, and I mean JUST went on newegg to find the last pieces of the PVR I'm making. I haven't ordered anything yet, but I've organized what I'm getting. I had some, tiny, almost insiginficant doubts about making one now simply because the mytharchive plugin was only in svn up until now, and for something like this I want to build it once and not worry about it as far as updates go until there's significant reason to update.

Although I've never made a PVR with it, yet, I've used MythTV a lot. MythTV (and Freevo to a lesser extent) are great examples of what linux can do to work its way into the life of more end users. Most people using other operating systems (which shal remain nameless) are far too intimidated to use a terminal for much of anything, and quite a few seem to dislike the look of GNOME/KDE/XFCE desktops simply because they aren't exactly like what people are already familiar with. MythTV, on the other hand, has a friendly interface that I've found few people can dislike, once they find (or make) a theme that suites them.

For everyone using knoppmyth, although that's certainly an acceptible way to make a mythtv box, especially if you're not particularly familiar with linux, there are probably better ways. (I'm still trying to decide between gentoo and ubuntu for my box, or possibly slackware. Either way I'll be building the mythtv application itself from source.)

What is Version 1?

[ratboy666]

What is version 1?

In my book, that means DONE. MythTV isn't done; not by a long shot. After all, .18 didn't even support DVD export directly (I had to use a mencoder script). It didn't do audio track backed slideshows from digital photos. It doesn't permit content to be "re-anchored" onto a different backend (or all backends). At least, not directly.

It is, however, a nice package.

But, there is no pressure to call it "Version 1". A change to "MythTV 20060910" may be in order (given that the scope of the project is so large). But that would be confusing.

If you are GOING to have a "Version 1" release, it should be (1) satisfying to the developers, (2) stable, and (3) feature complete for the users.

And after Version 1, where do you go? Version 2 must be a pretty big step. Even Linux hasn't hit Version 3 yet.

YMMV
Ratboy

Re:What is Version 1?

[adolf]

Hogwash. By those standards, nothing (except, perhaps, BSD's /bin/sh and a few other ancient works) deserves to be version >=1, because modern software is very seldom ever quite finished.

1.0 should be used to indicate that the software won't destroy your porn collection, empty your checking account, wreck your car, rape your wife, or burn your house down. It should be used to communicate to potential users that the software is finally considered ready for general use by the public for whatever unique purpose it is that made people start looking at the software in the first place.

In the particular case of MythTV, 1.0 should not mean that it is feature-complete, plays DVDs, produces audio-backed slideshows (WTF?), or anything else. I've ALREADY got machines that do a fantastic job of playing DVDs, and I've got software for any slideshow purpose I can imagine (along with most anyone who has recently purchased a retail-boxed DVD-R drive, or who runs just about any modern Linux distribution) in case I want to bore my in-laws with my lousy photos. I don't NEED these features, and I'm pretty sure that I don't WANT them, either.

Remember: The main reason anyone ever looks at something like MythTV in the first place is that it is a capable DVR. 1.0 should indicate that this DVR function -- which once again is the point of the thing -- works and is stable and is usable by sane people, and that any additional features which manage to be included are similarly polished.

Waiting for complete and total doneness before releasing MythTV 1.0 is like waiting for Emacs to include a BitTorrent client: Although both are likely to be inevitable, nobody will give a shit by the time it finally happens.

Leave the DVD playing for the DVD players, and the slideshowing to the slideshow programs, until those features are ALSO done, and then include them in a point release, a plugin, an add-on, or whatever. I've already got a kitchen sink and it works fine - I therefore am obviously not breathlessly awaiting the release of MythTV .21 (Now With Instant Hot Water).

All that I want, as Joe Smith with 2.3 kids, a wife, a house, two cars, and no free time, is a DVR. MythTV might be a good one, but at version .2, it sure as fuck doesn't sound like it.[1]

1: From reading the comments here, it seems like the DVR aspects are actually working pretty well these days, and that packages like KnoppMyth take a lot of the pain out of setting it up. Is it ready for feature-culling and general use? I don't know - I don't have time to evaluate it. That's what version numbers are SUPPOSED TO HELP ME WITH.

Re:What is Version 1?

[ookaze]

Hogwash. By those standards, nothing (except, perhaps, BSD's /bin/sh and a few other ancient works) deserves to be version >=1, because modern software is very seldom ever quite finished.

BS. The software is finished when the original author say he has every features he wanted and all work perfectly. Or even when it fits him to say it's finished.
No matter of reasoning you can have on what "should be", will give you the right to impose anything on these people.
You're not even the one dealing with these numbers, I just can't understand why you complain.
That YOU have all the features you want in MythTV doesn't mean the authors or other people are the same.
You basically are an egocentric person, thinking you are the metric by which MythTV completeness should be compared.
You're even more stupid, not even knowing what MythTV does now (even though it's written right there on the front page in the features section) and crazy enough to evaluate FOSS products on their version number alone.

Re:What is Version 1?

[ratboy666]

What is MythTV? You claim that it is "DVR". It isn't just that.

The NAME (and its attendant database name "mythconverg") comes from the idea that the "Mythical Convergence" of entertainment media, TV, and the digital computer could be realized.

Why is the version number so low? Consider that, as of this version (0.20), MythTV is capable (at last) of dealing with DVD menus. Earlier versions needed to use Xine (an external player) to play DVDs with menus.

Consider that, as of this version, MythTV is capable (at last) of "natively" recording DVDs. Previously, we needed an export script, and mencoder/dvdrecord (external programs) to accomplish this task.

And that's just handling DVDs. So, the convergence is coming, but its not there yet. And so, not version 1 yet.

YMMV
Ratboy.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

No, but it costs time.

So does reading and commenting on Slashdot. Anyone here can afford the time.

usb dvb dongles

[akc]

See http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB_USB

Re:Sounds fascinating

[Balthisar]

It's very daunting, so I use Knoppmyth Myself. Yeah, there's still a learning curve, but there's plenty of support. Yeah: me gets my old Tivo.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[RedWizzard]

The only weird, non-obvious thing I found is that what the configuration GUI calls "video sources" really should be called "channel allocation/listings sources" - although this may be a quirk of DVB and make more sense in analogue (can anyone enlighten me?).

Video sources in Myth are primarily sets of channels. They represent a particular feed into the system, and may be attached to multiple capture device inputs. E.g. one source in your system might be a VHF/UHF aerial. There is a certain set of channels available on the source. You might have that source plugged into two TV tuner cards. Your satellite dish (I'm assuming you're using DVB-S) is a second source. They don't really have anything to do with listings sources.

I'll second that for MythArchive

[silicon not in the v]

I have tried out MythTV in a couple of forms before, and coule basically get it working easily enough, except for that steaming pile which was the supposed export to DVD or VCD. I tried a couple of their methods with NUVexport and Mythburn, and they wouldn't do squat. I had burned DVDs in Linux with K3B on that machine, so I couldn't figure out why MythTV couldn't handle it. Since some people were supposedly able to get it working with these ugly hacks, I wondered why the MythTV group was taking so long to actually put it in the main program so it would really work.

Re:enough of the tuners, how 'bout TV out support?

[modemboy]

Hmm, I've been running KnoppMyth for over 1.5 years accross a few versions, with different Nvidia drivers, and have great tv output. I am usuing a geforce mx420 with an s-video output into a 32" CRT tv. I am running it at 1024x768 resolution. Maybe try a newer version of the nvidia drivers or a better nvidia card, they just work in every case I've seen, plug in the svideo and go...

Re:enough of the tuners, how 'bout TV out support?

[swillden]

I use DVI. Looks great.

Re:How OSS dooms itself to failure

[Mad_Rain]

I think you're trolling, but I'll bite. There are other, easier guides to follow for the installation of MythTV. The Wiki on MythTV is helpful, and so are the numerous forums for each distribution of linux. (At least, the ones where I've searched have been helpful).

I don't see how you can predict the death of OSS based on the documentation. The documentation for other OSS projects is just as convoluted (see MySQL or Apache's HTTP server) and they're not going away anytime soon.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[smchris]

I second the Fedora (and I have four other Debian machines). As I responded to the story the other day, I found the best setup documentation revolved around Fedora. Documentation, and as you say the convenient atrpms, made all the difference for me.

Re:Figures

[smchris]

Me too. At v .20, I think we are in for quite a ride.

I already want to see MythSecurity, MythAutomation for X10, and MythVideoConference.

I'm just afraid I won't live long enough for MythHolodeck.

Re:Tivo Too!

[smchris]

Don't forget the unofficial MythStream plugin, From the couch I can go from local HiDef news to streaming ugh-def BFM 24-hour news out of Paris.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[uglyduckling]

I hear you, and had kind of figured that out (hence why I have a working setup!) but hadn't put it as succinctly as you. However, they do have a lot to do with listings sources since the configuration GUI (at least on 0.19) has the listings data settings on the video sources configuration screen.

When I first used the configuration GUI I couldn't work out the difference between 'capture cards' and 'video sources', and presumed that the latter referred to some sort of ancillary system, e.g. the composite video input on an analogue capture card used to import from VHS. Perhaps a clearer term would be 'signal sources', particularly since the sources don't only pick up video but may also have radio and teletext data. At least to my mind I would have understood better when I first looked at the GUI that I needed to set up my capture card and then define what signal sources are going into it.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[RedWizzard]

However, they do have a lot to do with listings sources since the configuration GUI (at least on 0.19) has the listings data settings on the video sources configuration screen.

You're right, the listings data is generally loaded against a video source (and is configured in that screen). That's not required though, and the system doesn't really care about the source after that point as the listings data is stored against channels (though channels are associated with sources). So the relationship between source and listings data is more of a historical relationship than anything fundamental. This is more obvious to those of us not using DataDirect/Zap2It (i.e. everyone outside North America).

When I first used the configuration GUI I couldn't work out the difference between 'capture cards' and 'video sources', and presumed that the latter referred to some sort of ancillary system,

Yes, it's probably the first non-obvious concept that new MythTV users hit and the docs aren't real helpful either. Personally I don't like the design of mythtv-setup at all, though I understand why it is that way. It's designed to be used on a TV but I suspect that's a relatively unusual usage scenario. I'd prefer something more like a typical desktop app, with more inbuilt help.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[Daytona955i]

For me, the first time around the most difficult thing was getting the tv capture card working. It seems at the time, even though I had a PVR 250, I had a newer chip which wasn't fully supported. So I eventually found out that I had to download a patch for my kernel and recompile that then recompile the ivtv drivers and then it could work.

Just recently I decided to reinstall to get 0.19 up and running because I was having issues getting my nvidia drivers compiled right and a few other problems. Now the ivtv drivers work with my tuner card and the stock 2.6 kernel so the whole install process took less than a day. I did have some issues at first getting my data over because the package in ubuntu is 0.18 and I had already upgraded my DB to 0.19 but I didn't realize ubuntu was 0.18 until I went to investigate why I couldn't restore my database.

Most of my issues were upgrade related and even then, they weren't directly related to mythtv, mostly nvidia and outdated packages in ubuntu.

Re:Sounds fascinating

[ookaze]

No, but it costs time. I've used Linux as a server OS since Slackware 1.0, and have no problems configuring most things, but to date I've spent three solid days over the last 18 months on various attempts to get Myth working

Mmmh, no, it doesn't cost time. Just like school doesn't cost you time.
You invest time to build it, which means you will get this time back several times when it works. Like with school, the knowledge you get there will help you if you succeed in acquiring it.
You've used Linux, but you never acquired the basic knowledge on how to put big projects on a Linux OS. Basically, it means planning. And yes, MythTV is a big project, not just one app you put on your box. Besides, MythTV is actually not a lot of work to get working. That's all the buggy peripherals around it that you must configure that take time.
When I decided to tackle on MythTV, I planned 60 hours over one week to get it working, including compiling everything (from my custom OS to the latest MythTV component). And it worked out very well, most of the time was spent fixing hardware bugs. Like the hardest was that MythTV was freezing 10 seconds after launch, because the box couldn't handle the 8X AGP, I had to change it in the BIOS to 4X AGP, and the freeze was gone.

Hell, I went out and bought components based on recommendations for them being good video card and capture card to use with Myth, and I still couldn't get anything that worked

Clearly you relied on luck to make it work. I hope you learned luck won't work on Linux, but knowledge always does.

The most recent time, after blowing an entire weekend screwing around, I finally restored my Win2K backup that I'd made before I started, installed GBPVR and in about 5 minutes was up and running, and have been happy with that ever since

And I could have stayed with my GeexBox, finished in 0 seconds. But MythTV is WAY more powerful.

Satellite ?

[Builder]

Can MythTV work with Satellite systems? I'm specifically interested in getting it to work with Sky Digital in the UK, but I've never been able to get a definitive answer as to whether or not it can be made to work :(

Re:Extender is expensive compared to Myth front en

[brunes69]

You can use the Xbox as a media center extender, too. So, yes, I can find one for under $100, as you said.

Media Center Extender is not free. Softmod + Myth is. You are excluding the licensing cost of MCE from your equation.

Your magical apt-get trick only works if you're using Debian. Those of us who are running custom embedded hardware, such as the Hauppauge MediaMVP, really don't get that option.

Umm... what? The MediaMVP is not a MythFrontend. It has some ability to play some myth files off some specific myth versions, but it is VASTLY INFERIOR to a real MythFrontend and frankly I don't know why anyone would pay more (see above Xbox post) for a tiny subset of functionality. You can't use MythBrowser, MythGame, MythWeather, MythNews, or the huge variety of other MythTV plutins with the MediaMVp - all you can do is play music and watch videos.

If you were using this as your MythTV solution no wonder you were disappointed! Even it's LiveTV functionality is stunted compared to a real front end.

In your post you were complaining about the protocol being upgraded so your remote boxes were not "up to date". My point is with MythTV and *real* MythFrontend boxes, all your boxes should be always up to date so your post makes no sense.

Re:Optimizers! Optimizers! Optimizers!

[james_orr]

Apache isn't needed at all. You only need it if you want to use the web interface, which is not necessary as you can do all the same stuff on the regular frontend. Also, even if you do want to use it, it doesn't need to be on the same machine as either your backend or frontend.

As for mysql, it's my understanding that they did do some experiments with other methods but they simply were not as effective. All of the various recording rules and custom records etc can make for some complex queries and mysql does the job well.

and that is not all

[Grimwiz]

I also play WoW on my mythtv box. with HDMI connection to a LCD TV it looks sweet. Mythtv is a wonderful piece of software. It stores hundreds of hours of programs and music for my viewing pleasure, and leaving the underlying computer in a fully functional state is an excellent way to save buying another computer for those occasions when you wish to play games socially (you know, when you have a real person visiting)

I admit the software is not perfect yet - these are the hurdles I've either fixed or are living with...

To play World of Warcraft I am using Wine plus about a 30 line patch to fix mouse clicks. Then run "WoW.exe -opengl" (I'm running nvidia's drivers, and have an X configuration that mirrors the HDMI output with the VGA output). There are a few minor issues with sharing this computer between Myth and Wow - It works perfectly whilst recording, showing a framerate of about 25fps, but when transcodes kick in my framerate gets slaughtered, the TV crops the edges off the picture (which can be slightly irritating) and my Wine installation has a bit of trouble with WoW patches. On the Mythtvv front I've not got the infrared controller working, and the mythtv windows drivers now have a version mismatch, but they are minor issues.