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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?"
Hold on, guys, we can watch this show right after I reboot. Aw, crap, the nfs mount from the file server hung. Be right back, this will only take a minute. Wait, no, it's working now. Okay, there. I dunno why it's skipping, that should fix itself in a minute. Yeah, I know, it's still going on. Maybe another reboot would fix it. Aw shucks, it oopsed. Maybe this weekend I'll stop overclocking this AMD K6 I found in a dumpster over the holidays. I know, I know, but it didn't cost me a dime! Where are you guys going? Don't leave, this will only be a few more seconds. Trust me, this show is so awesome it's totally worth it. I'll just copy it over to the entertainment center box instead of the file server. Hm. I thought my network was faster than that, this should totally be taking less time. Fuck. Out of disk. Just lemme delete a couple things... there, now I'll redo the transfer. Oh, hey, you're back. What's in the bag from Fry's? No, what the hell, dude! I don't want a TiVo in my place, that thing is a tool of corporate oppression! Trust me, the myth box works 100% of the time, this is the only hiccup it's ever have, and it'll be fixed in a second. I don't care if that thing can download from Amazon! I can torrent any show ever. Okay, well, not that one. Or that one. But everything else is on torrent. Or usenet. There, see, it's booted now! Okay, it's playing. Hey, where'd everybody go?
From the article, about the User Interface: I want screenshots! Not some excuse why it's hard to judge. "This is my seven page article. however, it's a hard subject. therefore I'm going to write how hard it is to write about this subject"
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...
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.
Granting someone else control over your box may* make it easier for you to use, but it sure as hell isn't your box anymore.
Back on the topic of media specifically, I'm afraid that most people have no idea how much the BigCo's are pushing for control. If people knew, would they care? I doubt most people will even see a problem with broadcast flags and devices that refuse to play content...
People are complacent, and have learned to accept a (imho) fairly high level of suck in exchange for not having to think.
(*But no guarantee ... while I have no 1st hand experience with it, Vista reads like a nightmare compared to any reasonable modern distro)
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
You know that part about not being as hard as you make it out to be? You should have paid attention to that. Get knoppmyth burn to CD, boot from it and you are off and running. That pretty much works out of the box for ~80% of the people who try it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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,