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MythTV Vs. TiVo, Round 2
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?"
...just like any other half baked OSS software vs that built by professionals.
Is Tivoization part of the consideration?
Installing larger HDDs and playing with Volume manager so I can 'easily expand my storage space'
Installing a second tuner card so we can record two shows at a time
Making WOL work properly so I can start the backend from sleep with my laptop
Get The MythWeb plugin running so I can schedule shows from work
Install the SNES emulator so I can play supermario
Fix a quiter CPU fan to improve the noise footprint
If I owned a TiVO it would have installed with no trouble!
With myth I have weeks of fun ahead
I think the best uptime I've had on my MythTV PVR is around 200 days. I blame the power company for that one.
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...
Notice how they cloak the printer friendly version using some javascript wizardry. So you (next page) have to(next page) wade through (next page) pages of (next page) content free (next page) glorified ad billboards.
Until I can get CableCARD support in a home-built Linux box (and I know I never will) Myth is completely irrelevant. A set-top DVR is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-functional system.
... actually has nothing to do with its core function (pvr). It's the fact that the video and game plugins operate with information stored in the database. In theory this is fine, it lets you add covers, information, etc. The problem is it means you have to refresh the information whenever you add things to your directories, and if you're downloading IPTV stuff fairly often that's a pain. I wish it would have the option of just browsing the directories.
The article indeed is badly written and could be less snop-like.
MPD keeps a database of all of your music, but you can update it at any time from within the client, and (except for the first time) a database update takes about 3 seconds. If MythVideo worked that well, didn't make you go way out of your way to do the update, and didn't recheck everything even if stat() says it shouldn't have changed, it would be just fine :)
:)
(Incidentally if you ask me, MythMusic should be an MPD frontend... but that's a project for another day
TIVO is merely another link in the " we want your money so we are crippling your hardware " chain.
MythTV empowers me to do what I want with my hardware. That is the difference I see.
The only bitch I have is HDCP.
HDCP removes my ability to output my home movies from DVI to HDMI while attempting to prevent me from watching content some *AA thinks I would pay to see.
I have consulted a lawyer and am looking into a class action lawsuit.
My hardware.
My content.
You do not have the right to limit what I do with it. Especially when you could have a switch that disabled HDCP on the HDMI connection when I am watching non protected material.
If you the HDCP people think I should output DVI to component then why is HDMI superior to component and why should I buy HDMI ? Are you not marketing it as superior quality ?
...I can run the frontend on my laptop and watch live and recorded TV anywhere in my house. I don't yet use Myth for anything but TV using an 8 year old Hauppauge card but for me, the flexibility of the software is what wins me over. My only gripe is the default keyboard bindings don't make the most sense at first.
All PVR solutions have their pros and cons.
Mythtv
Pros: Most flexible when it comes to content. Goes beyond PVR capability with various plugins, like one for emulators.
Cons: Still difficult to setup for most people. Can also be time consuming to setup and maintain.
Tivo
Pros: Nice interface. Can learn based on your viewing habits.
Cons: Most expensive option, with the initial cost of the Tivo box, $19.95 for service (month-to-month) and additional costs related to an extra cable box/cablecard if you want to dual tuner capability. Also more restrictive of the recorded content than MythTV.
Cable PVR
Pros: Least expensive option. Easiest to setup (usually done by the cable company).
Cons: Most restrictive of the three when it comes to content.
He wants to use three computers to record six concurrect Saturday night live sports games, action films and a Lost episode, adding them to his private entertainment collection for watching on Sunday night or any time in the future while skipping all the commercials. If he is not allowed to do this he says he feels like a bug under the thumb of the broadcast companies, and will vote for a party that will let him do it.
As a happy customer of Tivo for several years now I am quite disappointed to find that it will not work for me if I move to Australia.
I have been doing a little research on MythTV (again) and still am off put by the complexity of it. The Tivo box really is my OS X to MythTVs Windows, in my opinion. But an even bigger issue to me is if I had to start paying a monthly fee to Tivo since they dropped their lifetime support fee option.
ps. The article was so lean on details I wonder if the writer even touched either a Tivo or MythTV box.
of going on 2 years, I'd have to say it's not even close - Tivo wins for the masses. Sure, my MythTV box does what my friends' Tivos do and more. But even though they are tech guys, too, I don't see many of them going through the pain in the ass experience that is setting up and maintaining the MythTV box.
I built my MythTV box a couple of years ago so I could record two shows at the same time (dual tuner PVR500 card) and then watch a third on our main cable. I planned on reusing olds parts as I had a fairly decent PC sitting around unused; all I needed to invest in was the tuner card and a remote. I got the MCE remote and a PVR500 for the job. All was fine and dandy until I found out that some obscure library for MythTV didn't work on my Athlon VIA motherboard chipset. A new motherboard meant new memory, and a new CPU. I also got a "HTPC" case so the thing didn't look ugly in the living room. So right off the bat my quest to do a homemade Tivo on the cheap without monthly fees set me back about $600 after throwing in a large hard drive, too. This didn't really bother me, though, as I figured it was part of doing business.
I used Knoppmyth to set things up, and granted, it did go fairly smooth. The basic install goes along fine, it's the customization and other tweaks that take time and effort. I currently have it recording up to two shows at once, use it as a multimedia center so I can copy videos and MP3s to it and use it as a jukebox, and have used it to play emulated NES, SNES, and MAME games. But here are some things that I've noticed while using MythTV, in no particular order:
I started off with a Ti4600 video card. It's fan started to die, so I spent money on an FX5200 card which I've read is recommended for MythTV. This went fine, and configured fine. But for some reason if I need to reset my MythTV box, the video settings revert back to a "generic" video card, and I have to recopy over the FX5200 settings from the Knoppmyth wiki. I have no idea why this is.
Related to the above, when the generic video settings are on, recorded audio and video is out of sync. The video quality is noticeably bad, too. When it's configured correct, things are a lot better.
I've played NES and MAME games on it. I've tried SNES, but can't get my Gravis controllers to work for some reason. Supposedly there's Genesis emulators out there, but I can't figure out how to use those within MythTV. I had issues setting up two controllers for the NES games, and they worked for awhile, but then I had some friends over and we were going to play and the 2nd controller didn't work anymore. I don't know why. Also, with the games, integrating the remote is supposed to be possible, but I don't know how to do it for my remote. It would be nice to be able to map certain keys to the remote to do emulator actions or to hit escape. Otherwise, I have to have a keyboard and mouse available when I'm using the emulators (currently via VNC). I don't have a wireless mouse/keyboard for the HTPC yet.
After about a year, things started locking up, recordings were out of sync. Turns out MySQL defaults to logging every database action, and the database logs filled up my hard drive, killing MythTV. There was a fix in the forums, but it was a pain.
I can only record basic cable. It can do digital, but it would have to hook up to my digital box and use IR forwarding to control the box. That would sort of defeat the purpose of being able to record a show and watch something else at the same time. Not to mention the whole reason I got it was so I could record *two* shows at the same time. I'd either need another digital box dedicated to the MythTV box, or some sort of CableCARD thing.
Perhaps the coolest thing about MythTV is the commercial skip. After it records a show, it marks commercials, and pressing a certain button while watching them jumps to the next segment of the show. I've found this to be accurate about 50% of the time. Usually, it works for the first commercial break,
Anyone ever check out GB-PVR?
I run it home on top of XP Pro SP2, I only have the software installed thats needed for the PVR function, no Office or anything like that. Makes the machine very stable! Multiple tuner support, web based programming.. its got all the bells and whistles of Myth. The nice part is, EVERYTHING that needs to be done on the PVR side of things can be done from the remote! There is a very active forum/developer community and sub, the owner/programmer is on there posting and helping people daily.
http://www.gbpvr.com/
http://www.gbpvr.com/pmwiki/
http://forums.gbpvr.com/
Yeah, I know it's Windows-based, but gb-pvr is the best free pvr solution out there, IMHO. I tried myth-tv/knoppmyth first. For an intermediate Linux user like me, setup and configuration was a nightmare, even with recommended hardware (read: hauppauge/nvidia). gb is EASY to configure, and it only consumes slightly more resources than myth. It's way easier to use, supports all the hardware that myth does, and it has available many of the nice plugins that myth has. I've been using it for a month, and I'll never watch TV without gb again.
Here's a link to the mirrordot mirror: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/a94586d1381d96706 5ccba4e6ff89ea0/index.html
Okay, I know that I'm a lot more technical than the general masses out there, but it took me all of 10 - 15 minutes to get Knoppmyth set up and working. I had a spare computer lying around, so I bought a Hauppauge PVR 350. I did have to tweak the sound a bit to get it to work right away after booting, and I did have some bad memory that I replaced (lock ups were not fun).
I enjoy being able to log my server usage with MRTG though. I'd like to see if Tivo can set up SNMP traps.
I will say that at the moment, Tivo is going to be a lot easier for the "moms and grandmas" out there to set up. Heck, they'd probably still need someone to set that up. There are pre-installed MythTV solutions though. http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?products_id=44 Is one such product. It's definitely more than Tivo, but at the moment there's no need for a monthly fee.
So, Tivo is currently more user friendly to set up. That could change if more people start offering comparable MythTV setups at comparable prices though.
Frankly, MediaPortal and the new Vista MCE are heads and shoulders about the rest and have the added benefit of being able to use Windows drivers which means everything on the planet is and will be supported.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
~# /etc/init.d/nfs restart
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
At my parent's house they just use Time Warner's HD Cable Box. Has a good 160GB of storage, interface is fine, and the monthly price is comparable to TiVO. No need for cablecard/ir-blaster/etc and there are 2 tuners and on demand video (although they never use it)
-nick
Both are great. I've used Mythtv now for about 3 years. However, whenever someone comes and asks me about using Mythtv, I always ask them "what do you want to do with it?" Basically, if you don't plan on keeping what you record permanently (where pre re-encoding commercial flagging comes in nice), and you don't plan on watching downloaded/otherwise created elsewhere video conenct, then I recommend just geting a tivo. Mythtv can be a lot of work to set up, and as others have mentioned, depending on your setup you'll be plagued with problems permanently.
... unless messing with it is the point.
Commercial flagging is nice, but reporogramming the tivo remote to do 30 second forwrad jumps is trivial and taking 8 seconds to get through 6 minutes of commercials plenty good enough. If you don't want all the quasi legal features of Mythtv, then there's no point in messing with it
I'm quite surprised that they used mythtv or is vdr too german? Here in Finland the popularity is reversed to say the least and getting softcam to work with some cheap smartcard readers wasn't that big of a hassle. Recording porn err documentaries has never been this easy.
Rigt before going to spec out a nice bunch of PC components on NewEgg and build a good box, I always pass by the Myth TV Users Mailing List to make sure that I get the most relevant and updated hardware necessary, and instead end up reading a sampling of the horror stories they go through, taking a few minutes to savor the different tortures one can be subjected to (video out of sync with audio, artifacts on certain channels, MySQL database corruption, NuvExport screws up, X breaks dependencies, and all the rest) and decide to wait another few weeks, certainly the new upcoming release will be much more reliable and user-friendly? And by the way, what happened to all of the things that were done during last year's Google's 'Summer Of Code' for Myth TV ? All the great features and enhancements that were worked on?
So I keep waiting, hoping that the next time I check the mailing list, their version of Matt Groening's Life In Hell have died down a bit....
Even though I am definitely doing a fair amount of Sys Admin duties on various distros, this is different, the killer part is what will happen when something screws up while I'm not around, and my wife gets mad because something didn't work, (provided I can even teach her to deal with all of these menus, options and the whole 'watching Live TV through Myth' syndrome) or my kid decides that he knows better and starts trying to hack the box himself in frustration....?
Surely the TiVo is an attractive box for the wife and kids, but with technology changing as rapidly as it has been, it is questionable whether to invest in such a product today, unless we were hard-core TV addicts, and could justify the cost as it would immediately be recouped.
Funnily enough, the most expedient thing I've ended up doing has been to identify the things I want to watch, and as a previous poster pointed out, just BitTorrent the shows in HD without commercials the next day, no matter where in the world I may be. (...and yes, it is sweet to download things at 10 Megs speed while in certain countries like Japan or Norway!!...LOL!)
Net result: I hardly EVER watch any TV whatsoever, and the few shows I care about can be watched on my laptop.
Well, I wish I had more time to tinker.... and still, major kudos to Jarod Wilson for having created this amazing open-source wonder. But as others have pointed out, for either of these two options, it's really going to all be about being able to have Myth TV interact with the CableCard slot, at least in major urban centers where cable companies rule the roost, and antenna reception is unwatchable!! The killer is that companies like Time Warner Cable are offering their own PVR deals, so they will make sure to lock anyone else out of the convenience until forced to do so by the FCC... Or that someone learns to hack the Firewire outputs of some of those new set-top decoders. Then you potentially still have HDCP to contend with. Oh, brother!! Brave new world !!
Z.
Hope that at least he earned something from the ads. That review is the biggest piece of fluff and empty rhetoric that it is less than useful for wiping your ass with.
This comparison would be completely different in Europe! In europe nearly every digital TV channel broadcasted over Cable, OTA or Sattelite is encrypted with one of many encryption standards (Conax, Irdeto, SECA, etc.).
Instead of a "CableCARD", which is used for viewing encrypted content in the US, a "Conditional Access Module" (CAM) is used in Europe, Africa and most Asian countries for all digital broadcast methods (DVB-C, -S and -T). Most TV companies supply set-top boxes with a built-in decoder and a smart-card, but the smart-card can also be used in other receivers or in a PC when you have the right CAM.
There are a lot of TV cards that can use CAM's and are very well supported by MythTV, for instance: http://http//knc1.com/gb.htm/.
Receiving HDTV or Encrypted content with MythTV is no problem in Europe at least.
The TiVo doesn't seem to exist in Europe, so I wouldn't be able to compare it to TiVo myself, since I never saw one. A very popular digital TV receiver / DVR in Europe is the Dreambox: http://www.dream-multimedia-tv.de/.
The Dreambox is an open platform, is linux-powered and doesn't have any "problems" with DRM or whatsoever. The only limitation the Dreambox and other set-top boxes have is a lack of raw computing power and that's why I prefer to have all my home entertainment on a HTPC.
And that's where the Windows (MCE) vs. Linux discussion comes back!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The cable co. box just works. It has two tuners for HDTV, and can store a fair amount of content. For everything else, you have the modded xbox. It can play fairly high quality video (granted, no true HD) from any torrent, and is already in a nice little box. And is is great for NES / SNES / Mame emulation. Anyone else have this setup?
Tivo seems a bit dated and irrelevant here. How does Myth compare to the Motorola Dual Tuner HD Box that Comcast and Verizon Fios use? I would imagine more people in the USA who are recording HD content use this box from the cable company. Isn't Tivo HD mostly for satellite?
Anyway, I'd love to switch away from the quirky motorola box, it's got way to many bugs and is very first generation. Can MythTV do anything for me here?
For the non-premium-channel watching geek.
1) No subscription fee
2) Commercial Flagging
3) No ads, auto-recorded shows, or other similar nonsense.
On the down side, it WAS a pain in the ass to set up. And not cheap; I think I spent $800+ on my box (HTPC case, 1G memory, two HD tuner cards, etc).
As for CableCard, I'm considering dropping cable entirely. All the shows I watch are on over-the-air TV, and I've now got working antenna set up.
I know you're wrong because I tried to do exactly this before I went and bought a Series 3 Tivo. The only way to have a DVR for encrypted HD is to get a Tivo or a POS cableco DVR. Your setup (unless you have some magical HD capture card that nobody makes) can only record encrypted HD content that has been downconverted to SD, and even if you did have HD capture, it would be re-encoded.
Oh, and put a watt-meter on your cable box+MythTV combo. I'll bet you spend more on additional electricity than you would on the monthly Tivo service fee.
HDCP is devil's spawn, but it doesn't prevent you from using HD for personal stuff.
HDMI has the advantage of a single audio/video cable solutiion from component to TV. If you want to stream your home movies over HDMI, you can happily do so.
The fact that the industry has eliminated fair use by stripping your latitide to do what you want with their content (not yours, btw - you don't own what comes to you via sat or cable, nor do you have many rights when it comes to OTA).
You must be one rich AC, 'cause there's not a lawyer in America who will take this one on for you without throwing a phone number at them. With the area code.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"I think what the parent is getting at, is that it's possible to capture analog HD from the cablebox and re-encode it. True, it's a lot of wasted processing power and some detail will be lost in the dual conversion, but it's not the stand-out difference some might expect."
And you tested this when? Nevermind how subjective "stand-out" really is. Plus "It does precisely everything the latest HD TiVo does." isn't correct regardless if one can use the analog hole.
A central entertainment system that needs to earn valuable space in the living room should provide more entertainment than just providing television.
My mythtv box does a few things that I believe makes it more useful to me than a Tivo.
1. I play World of Warcraft on my MythTV. Its hooked up to a HDMI flat screen TV so the resolution is ok. The play speed is similar to my laptop. This is very handy for hosting a WoW party where real live friends come round to play and eat pizza.
2. DSmyth lets me watch my recorded shows from any Windows PC in the house whenever I wish. Of course, this is provided wirelessly and works over 802.11b with no lag/stuttering because the bandwidth is reduced by transcoding.
3. Saves DVDs and CDs to disk, which protects them from the kids losing or breaking the original media.
4. Transcode ability lets MythTV automatically duplicate files into a format suitable for other devices (Ipaq or phone)
I assume the Tivo may have a web browser, for news and weather, since everything seems to nowadays, and that you can just open a file share and pull your shows onto a laptop for keeping the kids entertained in the car.
To prove I'm not just a fanboy, There are some areas which would benefit from development and bugfixes - MythArchive seems unreliable with transcoded shows, Hardware support for some devices (such as USB tuner sticks) is still at the "coming soon" stage which means you have to be a little careful which devices you purchase and scheduling does not automagically allow for overruns and cancellations. Unfortunately, the biggest pain in the rear that I have to deal with is due to the unfortunate state of dependencies that bite me when I try and update my Fedora underlying operating system, but that is a self-inflicted problem and irrelevent to the Tivo/MythTV comparison.
-- Don't believe everything you read, hear or think
I'm in the process of putting a debian mythtv box and perhaps the smartest thing I did was buy hauppauge's pvrusb2 device. (Not their tvusb2) It's got hardware mpeg decoding. The main reason being I use an old small form factor boxes. Some of them are very quiet and have 16:9 support.
If you go the way I went, starting with Debian Etch, it's an even longer road for sure. (lirc/BYO kernel package/sleep mode/keeping fans quiet/16:9) This is the price of freedom.
What no one has mentioned is the lack of a commercial mythtv pre-install on an OEM box. We all know the reason. No one is willing to pay for the _whole_ thing up front. Americans for the most part prefer getting nicked a few dollars a month not really caring that they end up pay much more than just paying less for a device in one swallow. American mobile phone industry is the perfect example.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I was messing around with MythTV a year or so ago, I think it was just getting the capability to acquire content over the firewire port, I assume that has matured and is a bit easier now. One of my gripes with MythTV was AT THE TIME, it was very hard to get working with the firewire port and would not change channels over the firewire port, where, with Windows, I could find utilities (CapDVHS) that made it trivial to capture content over firewire AND there were also utilities that could change channels over firewire, so no need for IR Blaster. Before people say its easy because I use Windows, all I had to do was downloaded a zip file, unpacked it, and run the executable. No install files or anything as it did't need to register itself.
Through the firewire port, I am not unable to record the "premium" HD stations (ESPN, HBO, Showtime, ...) but am able to record the "over-the-air" (ABC, CBS, NBC, ...) stations retransmitted by the cable company. Would a CableCard give me the ability to capture both the premium and over-the-air stations? If so, that would be a very big advantage. I currently have recorded in HD on my cable company supplied DVR cable box, the Maryland-Duke game and am unable to transfer it to my computer since it was on ESPN. A 2 hour HD recording takes up approximately 18% of the storage space for my 80 MB DVR.
P.S. I'm sure I will get a lecture about how easy it would have been for me to do under linux if I used linux all the time, but oh well, the simple fact is I don't, nor does that vast majority of Americans. I do use Ubuntu and gnucash though to keep track of business and personal finances, so I am not completely clueless when it comes to linux. Anyhow, I tried for hours on end to get firewire recording working to no avail, spending large amounts of time on the appropriate irc channels, most of the time finding people who thought it was offensive to their superior knowledge that I had to ask such questions. For somebody remotely computer literate, it just shouldn't be that difficult.
Additionally, they are forbidden from encrypting the digital broadcast channels carried on cable (SD digital or HD). They can however encrypt anything else they want.
My cable company was telling me they didn't have any boxes. It took some searching but I found and printed out that whole FCC ruling and highlighted all the relevant portions. The same ruling also requires new acquisitions of cable boxes by cable companies to have the ports. But it seemed that just by having it in hand they acknowledged everything in it and gave me a Firewire-enabled box that same day. (Incidentally, the same ruling seems to make cable boxes that downconvert HD to SD an FCC violation as it doesn't encourage consumer conversion to HD-capable equipment.)
Unfortunately I no longer have a link to where to find it, but some Googling for some of the phrases quoted above should turn up a few copies. I do know the PDF copy I found had a error in how they enumerated the findings.
It took a bit longer to get recording working on the Mac Pro. The cable box and my Canopus DV bridge don't like to play with each other, and occasionally I have to reboot the cable box to establish a valid connection. iRecord doesn't work at all with my box (SA 3250HD). I'm not expecting it to be able to tune the channel, but I also expect it not to just sit there doing nothing when the time to record goes by. So I use AV/C Browser to establish the connection, VirtualDVHS to record, VNC to play as it records, and MPEG StreamClip to convert. (It would be nice to have a non-recording playback option.)
I'm also having no luck trying to record the S/PDIF out of the cable box with the S/PDIF-in on my Mac Pro. Sometimes I just want to record the 5.1 audio from the cable box, such as some TV themes for resequencing and playing on my iPod. I'm guessing no one else is having problems as I haven't found any tips anywhere on how to get it to work. (I should be able to record the digital audio that way even from channels where the Firewire output is encrypted, yes?)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Just to point out, it's a FCC regulation that cable companies provide a working Firewire port on cable boxes, if you request it. You can stream video from the cable box to your computer this way. MythTV supports a few of these cable boxes.
The problem is getting your cable company to enable it. It not a common request, so no one at the cable company knows how to do it.
1: Their lack of an officially supported 30-second instant skip any longer.
2: No price guarantee against future increases any time they feel like it.
3: Their kowtowing to the movie/television industry to automatically delete recorded programs, again any time they feel like it.
4: Their changing their Terms of Service, again any time they feel like it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The dream for Myth TV would be to have it work on your game console. Game consoles come with processors, memory, hard drives, television interfaces, and controllers. To be able to feed in a television signal through USB, or view more freely through a number of legal streaming sites (major TV networks are offering more of their shows over the Internet), on cheap, dual-use (e.g. gaming) hardware that already plays DVD's for you and has a spot in the living room and on your televisions video inputs, seems much better than a PC-based solution.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I have seven TiVos, and I want to use MythTV. In fact, I want to help develop MythTV in my spare time. My main barrier is I need someone to point me toward a setup which will give me the best control over both recording and code revision, including personal vetting of every revision coming from the official distribution to ensure it won't disrupt my own customizations or whether it renders mine moot.
I plan to take the code to a level where it could be used to schedule your own TV station, 24/7 or less, loaded with options and as flexible as a circus yoga master. I'm sure most development has been for in-band control. I want to develop a comprehensive out-of-band control system for it, and then marry the two.
Just help me get set up and I'll run with it.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
TiVo is dated? Are you thinking of the SD-only Series2 units? The new Series3 is anything but dated - IMO far better than the cableco DVRs. You should check it out...
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I've done a typical thing. Got together some old hardware, tried out MythTV and found out it actually needs more hardware to work well. I then decided that replacing my 3 tivo + 1 pc that share shows wasn't worth the trouble. Sure I'd take a MythTV setup that would replace my tivos, but I won't buy all the parts and spend all the time getting it to work (along with the maintenance of such a system) when I can plug in the tivos and forget about them because they Just Work (tm).
I tried to setup myth about 4 years ago. I could never get it working. I was using an AMD 600Mhz machine and wintv card. I got WebVCR working under Red Hat and that satisfied me for a while. Switching to an Athlon 1600 and a MPEG2 capture card I was able to get myth working under FC2. It worked very well. I added another tuner card. All worked well. I decided to add a third card, so here is what I did. I bought a new logic board/processor. I used the same brand (VIA logic/Athlon 3200 processer), and imaged my old unit to my new unit. Everything worked. Not one problem. I added a third capture card. Everything worked. Not one problem. I installed MythFrontend on an old Apple G4 733. It was just fast enough to handle Myth, and now I had Myth in the bedroom and living room (on the G4). I installed it on my G5 in my office now I have myth in three rooms. The old Athlon 1600 in the basement runs myth on the spare TV (using the same image!). Laptops? both running MythFrontend wirelessly. TV movies games, whenever, wherever I want. If I want to add a show from work, I just type in my home URL, (thanks DYNDNS) and search, and record. Myth does everything I need and the monthly fee $0.00!
Of course I am in the camp that absolutely sees no benefit whatsoever in HD TV. I don't need a 20 inch tv that costs as much as a week vacation at Disney World. I don't use a cablecard, and I don't really see the need for BLU-RAY or HD-DVD. It is just TV. I like to watch what I want where I want and how I want. I put forth as much effort as I needed (and once I got the initial setup done, there was minimal effort) to get the system running. Almost all of the hardware was spare stuff I had sitting around collecting dust. And since I enjoy working on PCs and I find open source anything to be good for the soul, you could almost say it was a pleasure to go through the work involved in setting this thing up.
And don't forget that monthly fee; $0.00!
The uptime on my MythTV box is 133 days. I haven't touched the software for over a year, because it works fine and I don't want any of the new features. When I want to watch a show, I click TV->Watch Recordings and then select what I want to watch, and when commercials come up, a couple of presses of the "Fordward" button on my remote (configured to skip ahead 30 seconds) is all it takes to skip them. If I want to watch a DVD, no problem, play a game or two (kids love the old SNES games), no problem. Listen to my MP3/OGG collection, no problem. It all just works.
But How would a CableCARD work with a TV Tuner for the computer? Comparing the two is pointless. Media center cases (Thermaltake makes the best.) are cramped for space. And those riser cards only support 3 slots TOTAL. They only support the 3 PCI or 2 PCI + Graphics slot. Graphics slot for a graphics card to better drive the video and untax the cpu. 1 PCI card is most definitely a tv tuner. That just leaves one more pci slot. Are you willing to spend couple hundred for HD Audio motherboard or will you need a sound card? Will you want second tv tuner? CableCARD would take up a PCI slot.
And theres the problem of Linux based Mythtv. MPAA or Cable companies will never support CableCARD on Linux. The very nature of Linux won't allow it. Linux is not profitable to companies to develop software for it. Cable Companies can't give OSS developers the ability to decrypt cable programming at will. It would allow people to steal cable. CableCARD is quite literally a Windows and OSX only thing.
There is only one foreseeable way to bring HD cable to Mythtv. CableCARD based cable box.
My question remains. HOW would a CableCARD fit into a Media center case with mythtv driving it?
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After And I set up the server, I then got an even older 450 MHZ PC with barely enough RAM, and made a front end out of it. Again, that didn't work well, but a cheap Nvidia card took care of that AND gave me Svideo out so I could run a monitor and a TV as a second monitor (dual screen) at the same time. I then forced MythTV to run on the TV and got TV plus internet. It was only jerky if I did too much internet or whatever on the PC while watching TV. You do have to watch what window has focus, if you want to do some control to MythTV, but you get used to alt-tab etc.
Because that worked so very well, at only the cost of 2 cards, I replaced the front end machine with a new 3200+ AMD socket 754 MB and chip at a little over $100. I had the case and everything else already. I also just took the 450 MHZ frontend and put it in another room, still on the MythTV network.
The new AMD system is a dream. I run TV, internet, Openofffice.org, VNC to other machines, XP in a VMWare session, and much more. And performance is never a problem.
MythTV is OTA, and there are plenty of stations, ABC NBC CBS PBS etc all have mutiple channels each. Fox goes HD next year, but I can record all of these SDTV using power search (record a show anytime it finds it by name, don't record dups and reruns, and skip commericals.
nice.
Still running on the 600 MHZ backend, but I am planning to upscale to a higher end AMD and plenty of RAM and 1.5 TB of Hard disk. This will be my main server for whatever purpose, including VMWare etc. Oh, and 4 or 5 HDTV cards, plus the SDTV cards while there is still SDTV.
Really, this is the coolest thing for OTA TV.
Distribution used: MythDora http://g-ding.tv/, which is Fedora Core 5 and MythTV plus add-ons and on one install DVD. Also nice. FC6 would have been better, but this will do fine.
I use a $200 Miglia addon to my mac mini, and can use both the eyeTV settup and my macmini's apple remote to enjoy watching my shows. Simple. Easy. And I don't pay every month... Its the best of both worlds...
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
If you have Sys Admin'd you'll be able to set up Myth. I did it - it took a lot of time, but now that it's setup properly, it works great. If you aren't into spending the time and tweaking, by all means, get a Tivo. If you enjoy dinkering around, you can handle Myth. The main thing that took me so long was I was trying to re-use cheap, old hardware. Get stuff that works. That means a Hauppauge PVR card and an NVidia video card with binary drivers. ATI cards are a nightmare to get the TV out working properly.
Random is the New Order.
Remember, though, that the posts on the mailing lists are heavily skewed towards the people having problems. People like me, who don't have problems, don't generally post to the list.
I've been using MythTV for years, and have had few problems. And I have a wife and two preteen (one now teen) children, who also use it. I'm still on standard def, though.
FWIW, the only issues I usually see is when I change something. As with most Linux applications, once it is stable it will usually stay stable unless you change the configuration (hardware failures notwithstanding).
IIRC, it was Isaac Richards that originally developed MythTV. I think Jarod is the guy with the most popular install guide.
Enigma
I have had good success with MythTV however, it is not geared for channel surfers with set-top boxes.
The extra channel change loop to the set-top box makes channel changes agonizingly slow. The only real setup for hard core surfers are set-top boxes with built in PVR's.
As far as HDTV is concerned...until Hauppauge makes a PVR board with component video capture MythTV users will be stuck with s-video level quality.
I do admit that HD is great however, s-video capture has been serving me just fine.
Hedgehog
If you're making $200 an hour, I suggest outsourcing setting up your MythTV box to a college student for $40 an hour. Indeed, if you do go with a Tivo, I'd suggest getting a high school student to buy it and plug it in for you (at about $10 an hour) because your time is much too valuable to waste going to a store.
Meanwhile in reality:
Conversely I spent about $900 on all new parts for my Myth box. Service is free. I blew about 16 hours* total researching and setting it up. At a far more reasonable hourly rate of $50 an hour, it cost me about $800 of my time. It's been working for a year and a half now without problem. I have no reason to expect it to not last another year and a half. So $1,700 for three years of "service." More expensive than a TiVo, yes, but hardly outrageous. I think it's a reasonable premium for being able to burn to DVD without restriction, to be able to watch arbitrary videos from the internet or friends, to be able to watch DVDs on it (I'd been using a PS2, but it recently started refusing to play region coded DVDs, so this has been a useful free bonus), and generally not be locked into a single provider.
I've actually got both. I prefer my Tivo for straightforward recording and watching. But MythTV is a reasonable alternative and the price difference isn't overwhelming.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
EyeTV is a wonderful, cheap, affordable solution to PVR.
i.e. Does it learn my preferences automatically and search for shows that I will probably like? Scouring the TV landscape for gems of showsamong the crap?
Tivo does.
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http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/in dex.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070306006245& newsLang=en
MythTV is still useless to me... I look at it every year or two, but there is still no clear way for me to plug my Sky satellite system into a Myth box and manage that with programming, etc... Sad, because I'd buy a box and get going in a heartbeat if I could use my Satellite.
Thanks - that's really handy info... Hopefully Sky will be supported on some solution then.
I've asked about this on the lists a couple of times but never got anything quite as useful as your post.
So with TivoHD I have, according to your specification a non-functional system.
And it can't play games...
I've used "standalone" DVR's for a long time, and have always been a huge advocate. I never really persued the "home-brew" route mainly because of the cost and time investments. I preferred the non-cable company ReplayTV models for control, but was always plagued by limitations imposed by the cable/satellite providers. Things as simple as controlling STB's and as esoteric as HD recordings were always hurdles, but what I was able to get to work worked well. As for cable company-specific DVR's, I used a MOXI dual tuner HD DVR, and it was excellent, but again, its specific feature set was controlled by the cable company, so I was at their mercy.
Recently, I chose to abandon abandoned the standalone versions to build an HTPC running SageTV. The end result, like MythTV, is an amazingly tailorable, controllable PVR system that gives me exactly what I want in a PVR. I can record and playback SD and HD content, edit videos, burn them to DVD, remotely access my content and schedule recordings remotely, and a host osf other excellent features. (I can record unencrypted HD broadcasts over cable using the HDHomeRun and its SageTV integration.) But all this "greatness" comes with some limitations: I cannot record encrypted HD channels that I pay for. I must have an STB to receive and record any premium content including premium movie channels, PPV, and On Demand. The very nature of non-integrated recording means that recording quality will degrade slightly from the original.
The good news in all this is that the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is very high, so the limitations are certainly non-issues.
But this all boils down to the simple fact that if you expect full cable/satellite company compatibility, you will be disappointed with any non-integrated solution. Until a viable CableCARD solution surfaces that lets PC's record and playback SD & HD recordings, your expectations will NEVER be met with a legal home-brewed system. Your best solution is to look to your cable/satellite provider for their DVR offerings.
That said, if you are willing to put up with the limitations imposed by the cable/satellite providers, then you can enjoy amazing flexibility and features. that will really transform how you watch and manage your TV, DVD, Music, and general information content.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Most married guys I know choose Tivo (yours truly included).
All the additional features in the world cannot make up for the pain you will feel in your life from a missed Greys Anatomy recording, or any sort of DVR downtime while you upgrade to Teh Latest Release of Myth...
-MJ
I am happily married and using MythTV. Actually, my wife uses it, not me. Setup took a few evenings, but since then I've never had to touch it and no problems whatsoever.
Flash news!
Tivo is unavailable to more than 75% of the world population.
(hint there is a world outside the US)
So for most of the world MythTV wins by default.
This little fact is too often forgotten.
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