Slashdot Mirror
New Review Compares MythTV to Vista MCE
Parkus writes "There's a nice review on AVS forum of MythTV (Ubuntu) and Windows Vista MCE. The author tried both back to back and explains the pluses and minuses of each system after using them for a month. Helpful if you're thinking about setting up your own home theater rig."
I still don't see a reason for switching to Vista. Maybe if you're into that kind of things, but having Windows XP for my special needs and Ubuntu for the basic stuff seems to get the job done for me without spending money.
I've had a MythTV box for a couple of years. It's nice, works well. However, my new Vista Home Ultimate media machine is far easier to use and 'just works'. The ironic caveat, as mentioned in the article, is that MythTV (and it's underlying Linux kernel) have *better* hardware support than Vista! On supported hardware I find the Windows Media Center experience to be far better in general though.
That being said, if I were building a quiet entertainment center PC, I'd go with a Myth box and customize it to my liking. I can do that because I know how. Most consumers do not.
I use both a MythTV DVR (64-bit Ubuntu) and a MCE DVR (64-bit Vista) at home. The MythTV machine is primary and the Vista machine is secondary.
:-)
The automatic commercial skip in MythTV is fantastic!
You watch TV shows and there are no adverts. Simple as that.
The biggest problem is resisting to urge to pick up the remote when the show is leading into an ad break
Both machines can record ATSC HDTV and Digital Cable (QAM) - running a total of 4 digital tuners (2 x HDHomeRun network digital tuners with two tuner each - http://www.silicondust.com/)
I can't believe such a half-assed review is worthy of a link on /.
He didn't review HDTV because he was overseas not because Mythtv doesn't support it. I have had MythTV recording HDTV for over 1 1/2 years. Support is very good if you have fast hardware.
I can't beleive this review, I have nothing wrong with what he said objectively, but for god's sake, he just lets his obvious bias, quote "Steve Jobs gets his head out of his hole and decides to reshape the marketplace with a truly good PVR/Media Center/Super-Evolved Life Device (tm)."
He ends the review by just deciding to say all praise steve, the technological messiah, he will purge us of these heathan devices and bath us in his warm white iglow of technological perfection. At best apple TV is an overhyped reincarnation of some good technology pased on others, and more to the point why is he mentioning steve jobs in a review of two products completely unrelated to him!
Yes, we know, MythTV configuration sucks, especially if you're changing anything after initial set up. Anything else?
Yes, installing a plethora of drivers on a Windows system after you've sat there endlessly waiting for it to install sucks. It sucks even harder when one of those drivers decides to not work, or you find that you have to install them in a certain order. Then an automatic update screws things. Linux scores there.
So you still have to fanny about with your system even when you've spent 198 euros on a piece of software that should just recognise everything and take the head scratching out of the equation that you had to do with MythTV? I think we have a winner there to be honest, because at least with MythTV there's going to be something somewhere that will enable you to get it working - however awful that is. Hauppage and Microsoft won't fix it because it will probably be down to a combination of drivers and MCE software, and anyway, they simply won't give a toss about you or your problem until you're stumping up cash for the next version.
That's probably the single biggest reason why no one wants Windows on their TV. Microsoft just don't get how much more critical a TV is to people than a computer.
I thought mythtv would have been replaced with LinuxMCE by now, very nice tool, check out the videos. Far more powerful then Windows MCE, no DRM shit, focused on your media instead of giant MS logos.
What's the problem with HDTV in the US ? I watch HDTV here through my ISP's streams over ADSL2+ and it works fine, both in semi-HD (something like 1500x900) and full-size HD. They use a VLC based system for their streams and I use the same to read them. The encoding is either MPEG2 or MPEG4 depending on the channel.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The author, who you call a "zealot" says this about himself:
This sounds, to me, like half the astroturf here on Slashdot. No self respecting free software advocate would call themselves a "Microsoft-hater" or a "zealot". These are terms M$ has made up to defend their non free software, digital restrictions, licensing and other obnoxious practices. Anyone who values freedom is labled this way by non free software companies. Dislike of these practices does not make a person blind. His objectivity is suspect to say the least.
You say:
Then he proceeds to say since mythtv cant do HDTV and Media center can, he is going to hold off on HDTV. WTF that alone makes MythTV totally useless for a huge number of techies.
You might mention the reason for that:
Oh, huge minus there. There are cards that work.
You might also mention that most free software minuses are legally created fictions. It's still against the law to distribute a full free media system in the US. Your company risks a raid if they do so much as tell you where to get things, so it's a good thing Mark Shuttleworth is from South Africa.
All and all, I'm not sure if this message from new member "Sprak" is what it says it is or if it's just another PR ass wiper from the Redmond lie machine. Besides "Microsoft-hater" he uses a lot of other M$ keywords, "[M$] do hire some smart and talented people", "Vista install was pretty painless with some nice eyecandy and a generally more "serious" look than XP", "there is a feeling of connectedness in the software" and so on and so forth. You can spot these things from a mile away. They all sound the same because they all come with the same marching orders and talking points. Only someone intimately familiar with Windoze workarounds can make Vista work the way he did or would have the M$ brainwash language so ingrained into their thoughts. Such a person would not have time know free software, much less be a LUG officer.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1: No DRM
2: Not made by Microsoft (just kidding, although that is a factor for some people)
3: No DRM
Yeah, it might be a bit harder to set up. That's obviously a downside. On the other hand, you can rip all your DVD, no problem, without Windoze being mean. His complaints about rippng DVDs being illegal are invalid because:
a) If you're watching them on Linux, (in US) you're already breaking the law.
b) I bought the DVD at my local Best Buy, and I'm not giving it to other people, so I'll do what I want with it.
Yes, Point b) might not be exactly legal, but you see where I'm coming from. Also: MythTV has seperate front- and back- ends, so you can stream media to other parts of the house.
- DRM,
- spyware (not the common hidden kind, Microsoft written spyware)
- fewer formats supported
. You also can't- use it for any purpose,
- make custom changes,
- copy it for your friends who liked it very much and would like to get a copy,
- publish a modified version that, you know... removes said spyware and DRM, which everyone would like to but Microsoft and content providers don't want you to remove from Windows Media Center
Now... at the cost of maybe a little harder to use or set up, with MythTV or even Freevo which I like better than MythTV, you don't get DRM or spyware, you can play as many file formats as you want, and you have all the freedom you could ever need. Is there *any* choice at all? O Rlly?I have used both, and what I`ve found to be the real difference between Windows MCE and MythTV (and really all the FOSS HTPC types) is tha MCE is simple, straight forward, and just works but is very inflexible (as said in the article, it's hard to even modify the menu, try doing something like having an extra button on you're remote control change the screen font) whereas MythTV requires a little tinkering to get running, but is very flexible. I think this is really what it comes down to with most Windows VS. FOSS situations. Windows apps tend to work well and are more intuitive, whereas FOSS apps tend to require a little tweaking, but provide more opportunity for customization. So in short, if you're someone (like me) who likes to have everything just right and doesn't mind messing around for a few days in config files, go with MythTV. If on the other hand you're someone who doesn't mind the canned generic MCE look and feel, and wants something thats just going to work, go with MCE.
I would have rather seen a comparison between different TV tuners. The article pretty much concluded to what I would have thought: Linux is pretty solid, but a challenege for somebody not techical savvy, and windows quick and simple to set up, with a few glitches in hardware/UI.
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
Windows XP for my special needs and Ubuntu for the basic stuff seems to get the job done for me without spending money.
The AV people I know say things like, "I'm never going to Vista," so the use and advocacy of Vista smells. I'm surprised he was able to make Vista work at all, a task that's defeated the local M$ Ambassadors here at LSU and all they wanted was a desktop. Once you get around the driver issues you run straight into digital restrictions like disabled SPDIF outputs for "premium" content which make Vista unusable for hard core AV fans. Perhaps ignoring HD was more a kindness to Vista than it was to MythTV which is reported to work despite legal restrictions and other created evil.
Finally all of the M$ keywords and phrases make this "Sprak" guy sound like a M$ PR drone. "Microsoft-hater", nebulous talk about "correctness" "experience" to claim M$ has a better interface, all of this stinks out loud.
Fake "objectivity" is what I've come to expect from the M$ PR people. The more you "get the facts" from them the more wrong you are.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
"DVD importer looks like it could work well, but it's illegal I think to backup DVDs even for personal use, right?"
When assumptions like this are made, even with slight question, it's clear that the author is misinformed and the MPAA has won.
For the record, at least in the United States, it's not illegal to create backups of any of your owned media, DVDs included. Doing so is protected as Fair Use of the copyright of which you have purchased a license. Selling or otherwise distributing your backup copies is not protected, however, and backups must be destroyed or transferred when the ownership of the original media license is transferred.
Of course, Fair Use goes out the window if you sign an agreement stating that you will obey certain provisions that work against Fair Use. But you'd never agree to such terms, right?
Right?
I've tried both MythTv and Windows MCE. And quite frankly, at least for the near future, I think they are both a pain in the ass to use when compared to my TiVo or Dish Network DVR.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
He complains about the new menu system in Vista Media Center which uses horizontal scrolling. This is not the first time I've heard this and I agree it does seem to be quite wasteful on a 4:3 display but on a 16:9 plasma/LCD (which people building HTPCs should seriously consider), it's fantastic. The same can be said about the vista wall of music interface which is an easy and visually impressive way to navigate music and movies if you have a 16:9 display.
MCE is probably the best product microsoft has written. It has a pretty interface reminiscent of something apple would design and it suprisingle stable. It does it it's designed for and it does it well.
Huh?
When I read the article is was very clearly talking about MythTV compared to Vista MCE. I don't think he tried Linux MCE at all.
Linux MCE is a very different animal and MythTV only forms a small part of it. http://linuxmce.com/ It's an amazing piece of software.
---
http://www.linuxlaptops.eu/
XePhi Computers sell really cheap Linux CDs! http://www.xephi.co.uk
Afraid to log in are you?
What he said is that we'll have to put up with MCE and MythTV UNTIL Steve Jobs decides to include DVR functionality into Apple TV. And he's RIGHT. The only person on PLANET EARTH who seems to understand what people want from their consumer electronics is Steven Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple Incorporated.
And his obvious bias? What are you stupid? The man is a pro-Linux person. He's worked with organizations dedicated to Linux. If he's biased its towards LINUX not Apple. So care to explain your ANTI-Apple bias?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Okay, so maybe this is asking for trouble, but I read stuff like this and my first impulse is to ask "what's the point?"
:)
I can understand wanting to download stuff to a local computer and use it. No big deal there. I can understand modifying my DirecTivo to let me pull stuff down and save it for later.
But really... why do I want to save it for later? Why do I need to buy a gigantic HD and store hundreds of DVDs? (Really, why ever bother buying a damn DVD at all?)
I want to do a MythTV box, I really do. If nothing else, I'd love to put a server in my basement and use terminals elsewhere to get at it (or wireless laptops).
But in the end, I'd rather just go outside and play in the garden, or go canoeing, or do a little woodworking, or staying on the machine, go argue with people in my favorite forums.
I just don't see the need to DO a central media server. Is that wrong?
I can see that you didn't read very carefully in regards to HDTV: "I've temporarily held off on HDTV tuners as I'm on special assignment in Europe, with no access to signal." In the summary he even states that he is going to stick with Vista over MythTV for now.
I've been looking into building a Myth box. Any suggestions on cards for HD tuners?
I've read that none of the current ones actually accept output from a cable or satellite box after it has done the decoding via DVI, HDMI, VGA, YPbPr / Component? So are you only able to save over the air signals?
Such as, capture cards/encoders that support CableCard or CableCard2? That's one of two reasons why I havn't put together a media center yet; because I'm afraid that I'll lose analogue and have only digital right after I purchase a TV tuner card that doesn't have CC(2) support yet.
Wow, what DSL company is that? Sounds pretty cool.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
As long as proprietary/closed software from companies (ie. Microsoft) who have a long known history in restricting consumer's rights, but will bend over backward to please their own special customers (the content makers), I'll choose FOSS (MythTV) everytime without hesitation.
Windows Media Center Restricts Cable TV
No, the guy installed vanilla Ubuntu.
Mods really need to RTFA before they start modding people "informative".
Check out the HDHomeRun. http://www.silicondust.com/
It's not a card, it's an external box, that has two tuners and sits on your network. The beauty is, no worries about drivers, kernels, etc.
It can tune OTA and unencrypted QAM. That means, unencrypted cable. Can't do anything w/ satellite.
-Mark
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who understand binary and those who don't.
The more I think about it, the more the article looks like an ad for Vista. One of many M$ PR drones posting as AC insultingly froths:
All you're doing is slagging off the author and not addressing some of his very reasonable points.
I did not see many reasonable points in Vista's favor. Mostly the author dips to M$ talking points about "correctness" "experience" and other nebulous observations. There was no number of click count for common tasks, mention of digital restrictions or other ease of use issues that people really care about.
Why, exactly would someone spend hours setting up (or failing to set up) MythTV when Vista can do everything MythTV can?
Here the author almost got things right. Vista gave him more hardware trouble than MythTV did. Getting Vista to work at all is difficult for all but the most hardened fanboys who know all the details of driver downloading, register hacking, etc. That he used Vista at all is fishy, because most AV people will tell you to sick with XP and excellent third party software available on that platform. HD is almost certain to tip the balance further in Myth's favor because it too has been working for a while and you can still get hardware that is not limited by broadcast flags. Try that on anything from M$.
Yet again, Microsoft have produced a superior product which people actually WANT, and can USE.
People don't want DRM and the very purpose of digital restrictions is to keep people from doing what they want, even if the shit worked out of the box.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
a lot of GNU/Linux people either are stuck dealing with Windows in their day jobs
If the author of the article was really familiar with Windoze, he would have known to use XP and third party applications for his media center. If not, he would never have made Vista work. There's a lot about this article that does not add up and I smell a switcher attack.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I used a MythTV machine for a while, before I had HDTV. I set up whatever release of KnoppMyth was the latest in the spring of 2005 on an Asus Pundit with a Hauppauge PVR350 board. Setting up KnoppMyth was far from a plug and play experience; I had to update almost everything to make it work, and had to go hunt down patches to things like LIRC to get it working with the rest of the system. The choice of which video-out to use was a study in compromises: I could either use the Asus' built-in ATI S-Video out, which had no video acceleration and thus suffered from visible speed issues during playback; or I could use the PVR350 output, which had excellent TV playback, but had a terrible navigation and recording interface since the framebuffer X server could only render video fullscreen. I wound up choosing the PVR350 out, since I preferred to schedule recordings using the web server interface. Once I got it fully running, the system was pretty nice. The basic menu interface looked good and was intuitive, and the picture quality from the PVR350 over S-Video was outstanding. I really liked being able to connect to its web server to schedule shows, because the scheduler interface was awful when viewed on the TV. On the whole, when it worked, it was brilliant, but it definitely had its fair share of bugs -- the two worst being that it would occasionally just produce a black screen when you rewound a show to the beginning, which you could usually revover from, and the wifi (a usb dongle) would sometimes just up and stop working due to a buggy driver, requiring a reboot to get connectivity again. But on the whole it was pretty nice, the TV interface was OK but the selling point for me was the excellent web interface. Once I got HDTV in December of 05, the MythTV box really wasn't an option any more. Since then I've had HD digital cable from two different providers (Comcast and Optimum) both with the Scientific Atlanta SA8300HD DVR (though Comcast and Optimum load different firmware onto the DVR). Frankly, there's no comparison between the commercial DVR and MythTV. The commercial system does everything faster (powering up, changing channels) and never, ever crashes. Sure, I can't transfer movies to my laptop or whatever, but I guess that just isn't something I feel the need to do. I took the PVR350 out of the Pundit, upgraded it to Slackware, and keep it in my entertainment center as a MAME box. Bottom line, if you have a 4:3 CRT TV and basic cable, MythTV is probably fine. If you have a nice widescreen TV and digital cable, MythTV just can't do the things you need, and you can get a DVR from your cable company for so cheap even MythTV can't compete (since after all you still need hardware to run the thing).
I'm currently using Knoppmyth for my setup, and while I got it to work fine (after a long time of fussing with it, which I think is fairly normal for linux and mythtv). How does LinuxMCE compare to it? I'm not worried about installation, just wondering about if it does/doesn't do things that Knoppmyth does. I see from the LinuxMCE website that it seems to use a pretty different UI from Knoppmyth, and being built on a standard Ubuntu install gives me hope (rather than the custom-assembled debian that Knopp currently does, which you basically can't update or it breaks everything).
Anyone have a good handle on this one?
OK, so the guy compared out of the box Ubuntu and MythTV against Vista MCE. What he should have compared is LinuxMCE vs VistaMCE. Here is a Google video that compares LinuxMCE to VistaMCE.
After investing in a Hauppauge card, I tried using MythTV. While I understand why the interface is as it is, as it's primarily designed for use via a remote, I have to say I found the experience infuriating. Driving it with a keyboard & mouse, nothing ever did what I expected it to, or worse, frequently doing the opposite. Overall, I found window's Team Media portal a much more pleasurable experience.
Except the reliability of the hardware under windows is fairly woeful, TMP outputs in the annoying MS-DVR format, and (for me) TMP's terrible sync issues.
So now I use dvbstream, mplayer and a few perl scripts I knocked together. It all just works. I've happily traded the ability to channel hop, and the fancy EPGs, for a recording reliability of near 100%.
Free, in France. It's a fairly standard package locally (although just the TV bit, not the VLC bit, others tend to use more proprietary tools). They all offer similar packages modelled on whatever Free came up with (they tend to lead the market atm), that is ADSL2+, TV and IP phone with 20 or 30 free countries for about 30 € / month. No capping, static IP, reverse DNS, servers allowed, FTTH coming this year. No IPv6 though.
(details may vary with the ISP but that's fairly typical for ADSL, cable has more restrictions)
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I've had a mythtv system for a couple of years as well and for it "just works". Plays DVD's, games, and mp3's and of course all the good PVR functionality. Looking at the uptime, I see its up to 80 days now... my record is 140 days. I bet I could correlate my system outages with wind storms (think power outage).
STFU about slashdot bias.
The reviewer states that the Vista install took a long time because, since he had bought the upgrade version, he had to install XP first.
I know for a fact that upgrade versions of eariler windows iterations did not require you to install an older version first. You could boot from the upgrade disc and install the OS, but you would be ask to insert the older versions disc at some point during the install process, just to verify you actually owned it. Is this no longer possible in Vista?
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
Now if they could only ditch the EXTREMELY misleading video with the horrible narration..
Broadcast flags...start to retard its functionality. http://wireless.engadget.com/2007/06/01/canadian-c able-providers-locking-out-vista-media-centers/
I will stick with the operating systems that lets me make the decisions
You do know that DRM for Windows MCE only applies to CableCard which Linux can't even support, right? If you don't use CableCard, there is no DRM and there are 3rd party add-ons for Windows MCE that allow you to strip commercials.
I much prefer SageTV to BeyondTV because it's more flexible. Yes it also supports dixv recording on encoder boxes like the plextor, supports transcoding, compression, commercial skips and so on. It also has a slew of alternate menu systems through the use of .stv files. Been using it for a few years now and it's always met my needs admirably. Nex
> I have had MythTV recording HDTV for over 1 1/2 years. Support is very good if you have fast hardware.
I've been running a MythTV box for HDTV for about as long. What you say about fast hardware simply isn't true. My frontend is an Athlon XP 2000+ (~$40) with an nVidia 5200 (~$30). I'm using XvMC, and I've never had so much as a hiccup.
It's twitter with another uninformed opinion!
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Hyperbole at best, utter bollocks at worst. Cite. Go on. All those new laptops being sold, they're all to "hardest core fanboys", are they? No, I'm not talking about the fraction of a per cent who want XP again, I'm talking about the 99.9x% of users who have it. Hard core fanboys, are they? You might want to consider a sedative - the rage and foaming-at-the-mouth apoplexies you get into on this whole issue surely can't be good for your holistic wellbeing.
Jesus, how in the name of blue fuck does this get marked insightful? You really do live in a house with tin foil everywhere to protect you from the possibility that Microsoft is trying to corrupt your pure, untainted GNU/Linux mindset.
Thank you for giving me the best laugh of the day. I mean, you're the one who can't do anything *but* mention how much you hate Microsoft and Windows. I'm going to keep this link as a little treasure, and every time you spew hatred about Microsoft, Windows and non-free software in general I'm going to post it.
What an interesting moderation manipulation. You have taken a comment that was mostly informative and insightful and turned it into a "funny" comment with one or two modpoints. To prove your ability, you self modded the disgusting bile above "funny" as well. Ah, but you M$ PR flacks are enterprising. Where would you be though without M$ powered botnets? It's ironic that M$ flaws can be used to boost M$'s public image.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I don't think it's "forbidden" to have sockpuppets, but I do think it's really bad form to shill one's own posts, regardless of twitter's claims that anyone who disagrees with him is a "M$ PR flak".
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I ran Myth a long time ago and I liked it, but when I got my XBox360 and realised that it had a Media Centre Extender built in, I install XP MCE. I have since bought a second XBox360 and have both running off the same (now Vista Ultimate) box. Works great. With the XBoxes connected to the TVs instead of the computer, I can avoid all sorts of annoyances wth using a TV as a monitor (computer setting weird resolution, losing the TV after repeated power cycles, etc). Plus, I heard a rumour that you can play video games on the 360.
I find this recommendation very intriguing twitter, considering posts of yours like this one. Quote:
At some point I suppose you decided that it was pointless to spend all your time spewing FUD about "Windoze XP" and you've now decided to switch gears to FUDing Vista instead.
Do you really expect people to trust you? That brusque tone of authority means absolutely nothing other than to show everyone on /. that you're scared to death of Vista for some reason.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
All those new laptops being sold, they're all to "hardest core fanboys", are they? No, I'm not talking about the fraction of a per cent who want XP again, I'm talking about the 99.9x% of users who have it. Hard core fanboys, are they?
Count them for me, before the vendors go out of business. Other restrictive devices have failed in the past. M$ has made the mistake of making their whole OS into a restrictive device and people are not buying it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Produce a _device_, for one thing, a piece of hardware that is quiet, boots (or wakes from standby; standby with Linux and the V4L/DVB drivers is still not reliable IME) in seconds, can be turned on via remote, etc."
It can't? But I thought the open source movement could do everything? Man! Another role model down the tubes.
At some point I suppose you decided that it was pointless to spend all your time spewing FUD about "Windoze XP" and you've now decided to switch gears to FUDing Vista instead.
No, XP still sucks. As a PVR it has poor uptime and should not be connected to the internet. Just the same, the author should know that XP is more stable than Vista and there's more software and hardware available for XP to make a PVR than there is for Vista.
Someone who really knows what they are doing has MythTV working. You can connect that to the internet and that's what has the MAFIAA scared. The future is free.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
MythTV is growing into much more than a PVR and it scares M$ the MAFIAA silly. It's getting video conferencing, games, email and browsing - which all look great on HD TV's
If this was anyone but twitter posting, I'd be asking if he had too much to drink.
Surface [Video] When this Vista tech hits the home market, it is going to be big. Surface makes interaction with the PC a social experience. more open and more casual than the Wii controller.
In the near term, there is Windows Home Server. HP MediaSmart Server Brand name product. No assembly required...
And so we return to reality. Heathkit died in the 'eighties. The home PC market is not a craft market. No one wants to deal with the assembly and configuration issues of systems this complex.
There are already designed-for-Vista systems on the market that upstage the generic XP box. HP TouchSmart IQ770 PC Review. There will be more to come. Products like ATI's CableCARD HDTV Digital Cable Tuner will eventually have an impact. A system that is realistically spec'd for Vista will be realistically spec'd for HD - whether the source is camcorder video, cable, broadcast, ot the net.
_____
IP laws are not going into the trash so long as audiences expect to see $100 million dollar productions on their 52 inch screen. In the thirties, forties, and fiftues, almost everything in American radio and television was produced by advertising agencies and down to the last detail designed to meet the needs of their mass-market sponsors.
You might want to think about that before you deny creative talents a direct and sustaining source of income.
I own a TiVo. I've been wanting, for a few years now, to set up a MythTV box but just always have too much else to do. Finally, last night I decided to try BeyondTV.
Installed it, set it to record a couple shows, went to bed.
A half hour show takes about 2 GB (it's 360 MB when sent to my computer from TiVo Desktop using Galleon), and the picture quality is terrible. I uninstalled it this afternoon.
I did some (rudimentary) debugging first: I plugged the cable in to a TV, and the picture quality was perfect. I'm using a Hauppauge PVR-500, and also have a WinTV Go-plus (for the remote), but it didn't recognize the tuner in the latter.
I'm now officially giving up. Perhaps I'll try Vista if I get a new machine, but for now I'll just suck it up and pay $13 a month. Seriously, it saves me expense when my time is considered (i.e., opportunity cost).
It's saddening in a way to admit defeat, but at least I don't have to have a continuing internal struggle ("I know I can get this right if I just spend 2 ... 5 ... 20 ... more hours on it").
Well, it may be slightly off-topic, but this is probably the best place to ask the question. Installing mythTV, I can't get the tuner to work. It uses the bttv module, but when it loads reports that it uses tuner -1, and only gives video from the composite and s-video inputs. Anyone got any ideas?
[clever sig]
I'm not sure you can lay the blame for this at Microsoft's doorstep. Maybe you can, but maybe nVidia has just been incompetent in developing drivers for an OS that has been in general release for months now. Seriously, if a graphics card company can't write drivers for a graphics card, something is wrong.
BTW, the reviewer mentioned that he had to roll back to an early-version nVidia driver because he got stuttering video with the newest drivers. I had this problem, too. What happened is that nVidia shipped the earlier versions of its drivers with the Inverse Telecine option turned off. In the new drivers, it defaults to on -- and that's what causes the stuttering video in MCE. Pull up the nVidia Control Panel, go to the "Video & Television" options, select the "Enhancements" panel, and uncheck the box that says "Use Inverse Telecine." Video will play smoothly again.
Breakfast served all day!
Currently in the US, backing up a DVD that you've purchased involves bypassing a digital encryption algorithm, which is explicitly prohibited by the DMCA.
;^)
Incorrect. Making a byte-for-byte copy of the DVD does not decrypt the video contents. Since this does not bypass the CSS encryption, the restriction of the DMCA does not apply. Whether or not it is fair use is subject to further discussion but I can make full copies of the DVDs I own without triggering the anti-decryption portion of the DMCA. Now, if I extract only the video portion of the DVD, yes, the DMCA would apply.
Please do your part to understand before you continue to add to the confusion.
I have a 40" LCD and a mainly Polk Based 5.1 setup with a Denon receiver and I was thinking about hooking up my PC to the whole thing. I was wondering though. What are my options for outputting sound from my PC into the Denon? What solution would give me the best possible sound? A High end sound card? Or Something I don't even know about?
Time is an illusion, lunch doubly so.
What I really want to see is a review of MythTV by someone installing it with no clue about linux. Has anyone ever tried starting their linux experience with MythTV? I find linux gurus referring to "a bit of tinkering to get it working" unhelpful, as a bit of expert tinkering can be years of failure for a n00b.
is an xbox (original) with mythtv or some equivalent on it. I don't have one personally (I don't actually have a tv right now), but I've seen friends with one and it's pretty nifty.
Basically, all anyone wants is a handy way to play the divx files they have on their big tv... Instead of making a set top box with a hard drive that plays divx, companies like microsoft and apple keep making over complicated devices that stream off of another computer, and don't run divx. Both of them are so afraid of stepping on the toes of copyright holders, and both of them have too much vested interest in promoting their own file formats to actually put together a good movie player...
This is one area where a smaller manufacturer who doesn't have a vested interest in protecting intellectual property or promoting their own proprietary media format, that no one uses, would stand a better chance in the market. As it is, clumsy custom solutions like hacked xboxes, or laptops with s-video out end up working better for solving practical problems than the solutions from microsoft and apple...
I don't know how they can generate so much hype over the crappy encumbering solutions they have out right.
If you want the ease of use of MCE and don't want the fiddlyness of MythTV.
Try the open source Mediaportal: http://team-mediaportal.com/
They're certainly doing some interesting things over there and they are always open to suggestions/improvements.
what is available that uses no MythTV at all? the fact that every piece of software out there uses the same mythtv recording backend somewhat frightens me. no doubt its fine software but are there really no alterantives?
Can't read TFA because of a work web filter, dammit - hope this is relevant.
Have run MCE and currently run MythTV. I have a Dish setup and have ordered an IR Blaster to complete tha package and skip the need for a second DVR on my home network.
I have only one gripe about MythTV. There's no way I can see to switch from fullscreen to windowed operation and back again - which is something that's pretty easily done in MCE or even in plain old Windows with standard Hauppauge software. As it stands today I have two links to MythTV - one with "--geometry 704x480 --windowed" switches and one that just runs fullscreen. I run them on different workspaces since there's no way to switch between the two modes.
Well, two gripes - mythweather quit working when MSNBC moved their weather site. Rather than patch the application to fix this can't we just stick the location of the web feed in a config file? Please?
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
With one exception. I rolled with a knoppix based setup. KnoppMyth. It did auto detect a lot, but there were some minor issues.
The problems were not in the backend, but in the frontend.
I switched out and tested MCE on top of WinXP (i.e. older, not the Vista version). Everything autodetected and ran out of the box, including tuner card. And it was easier to integrate with the other parts of my home network and media.
When it came down to it the deciding factor was which my wife could use easiest. People need to remember TV's are not "tinkering technology", they are simply supposed to work. And , in my case, the MCE option simply worked better and easier.
I don't agree with his flagrant fellating of Mr Jobs as the technological messiah. I have yet to test LinuxMCE, but also that one very nice looking video of it lost credibility with me when I realized it was just a fanboy of the thing evangelizing.
Right now, the MCE box does everything I need, and does it well.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Actually, there are quite a few places banning the upgrade to Vista and O2k7. Like the California DoT. I'd say the "fraction of a percent" you mentioned is actually quite a bit larger than you think it is. It was enough to get Dell to go back to selling xp boxes. Even Staples managed to sell out their XP computers when the Vista stock came in. If Vista is so great, why were people picking up XP computers, with Vista on the shelf right next to them and at comparable prices? Why are people who bought Dell computers with XP not installing the free Vista upgrade? Vista is not the abomination that Linux Fanboys are declaring it, but it is hardly the great Operating System Microsoft has convinced you it is.
Could you please explain why XP should not be connected to the internet? I mean what specifically is the problem with that?
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
When are we going to see tuner cards which support DirecTV in Myth or other boxes? Never seems the current answer...
If you don't want to mess with drivers and hunting everything down, and want a MythTV box that JUST WORKS, get or build a Dragon. http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?products_id=44 The specs about what is in the box are open - you are welcome to build your own, or you can just pay the guys at StormLogic your money and they will custom build the box and ship it out to you. I bought one of their boxes and am happy customer. I'm watching dual-channel HDTV over the air and as a loyal Tivo customer for over 5 years, I have to say this is one of the BEST purchases I've made. Being able to customize it later once you get braver with linux is just icing on the cake.