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MythTV Vs. TiVo, Round 2

Posted by kdawson on from the head-to-head dept.

Egadfly writes with a comparison of the open source MythTV and the highly commercial TiVo Series 3. "How different are the two systems' available remote control devices and their graphic interfaces when it comes to ease of use? Which product should you choose if your HD signal comes OTA or if you plan to use CableCARDs? And what software features (present and future) can you expect with each product? Will loopholes in FCC regulations and cable company encryption ultimately squeeze out MythTV and other open source players?"

3 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Completely Off Topic by WaZiX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But maybe there should be a rule about not allowing links to Articles full of Advertisement that span over 7 pages with about 100 words/page...

  2. Re:Myth Wins of course by jimstapleton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I gave up on trying to figure out mythtv...

    on my desktop I have a watch-tv.sh file:
    START
        #!/bin/sh
        cat /dev/cxm0 > vlc stream:///dev/stdin
        bash &
    STOP

    I use the pvr250-control console app that was with the driver application to change the channel/input source.

    To record? I cron a record.sh I made: record.sh channel file duration-in-minutes
    START
        #!/bin/sh
        pvr250-control -t -m 0 $1
        cat /dev/cxm0 > $2 &
        sleep 1
        PID=$(ps | grep cat | grep cxm0 | cut -f 2 -d ' ')
        sleep $(echo "$3 * 60" | bc)
        kill $PID
    STOP

    Fancy? No
    Elegant? Hell No
    Works? Yes
    Low Hassle? Yes

    but yeah, a TiVo would probably be even easier than that.

    --
    34486853790
    Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
  3. Re:TiVo wins of course... by AusIV · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To be fair, I've never used a Tivo. I have used a number of other DVRs provided by cable companies, and I'll take MythTV any day. The others I've used won't allow you to short your shows by TV show. When you have over 350 shows recorded, this is a must. I also have a 400 GB RAID for storage. Other DVRs will allow an eSATA drive, so they can get up to 500 GB, but lets hope you don't have a drive failure. MythTV also has a nice web interface, so I can set shows to record whether I'm in my room or across the country. My MythTV box has been up for a solid month without any problems, and I only rebooted then to try out a new Live CD and see if it would auto-detect my RAID. While I have had some more serious issues with MythTV, it's been 6 months, and I've upgraded both MythTV and my distro since then and it's been completely reliable. Tivo may be a cut above the other DVRs offered by my cable company, but MythTV puts the DVRs I've used to shame.