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."

Comments

Goatse!

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse!

Re:DVD backup illegality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about "legal"? It will always be lawful.

Re:No Credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an English teacher that would love to bath you in an iglow.

It's bright in the iglow.

Not such a reasonable Author.

[twitter]

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.

digital restrictions blow.

[twitter]

Is clicking "Check for updates" and "Install updates" too difficult for the "average GNU/Linux person"?

Sure it is, if the damn SATA drive does not work. The average GNU/Linux person would never get to the screen where they could press that button. From previous broken "updates" the button is a crap shot anyway.

No, I've never used Vista and I hope never to have to. Vista is so broken that it is not installed on any public machines and reasonable places of work have banned it. Only the hardest core fanboys have Vista and keeps it.

This article is looking more and more like an attempt to advertise and sell Vista. No one else is buying it, so M$ has decided to try to push it on Slashdot users. Ha, fat chance. Anyone familiar with AV in the Windoze world has their pet third party applications that work under XP. People who know enough to make MythTV work will be far happier with it than any DRM crippled pile from M$.

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. You can plug Amarok onto it and have a really cool video/music juke box. It can store and share all your pictures and media with the world. This is what M$ would like their media center to do and how they intend to stay relevant in the home market while their core products quickly become second rate commodities most people take for granted and can get online at no cost. The Zune squirt is a good indicator of how well their ambitions will work out and a good advertisement for free software. Sooner or later, people are going to demand these things without obnoxious restrictions and the MAFIAA's nasty little "IP" laws are going to go into the trash. The legal and technical barriers M$/MAFIAA erected have no more shut down MythTV than Vista has satisfied customer demands. Free software is doing more to enable HD content than M$ ever will.

Makes one wonder

[DaveV1.0]

I'll be honest about my bias, I've been involved with Linux for about 14 years and love it! I held an officer position at a US LUG and have made my Linux machine my main home system (with a little OS X on my G5 for diversity). In addition, as are some Linux users, I'm usually a Microsoft-hater but am forced to use Windows and associated bloatware at work so I try to see the best in it- sigh." ...
In the end, though impressed with MythTV, I'm going to stick with Vista for a while.

If someone who is already biased for MythTV thinks Vista MCE is marginally better, what will an unbiased person think? Or, someone who is just used to Microsoft operating systems?

I believe that if this were a review from anyone who is not a Linuxophile, everyone would be screaming that MS paid for the good review, that it was astroturfing, etc.