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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'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/)
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.
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.
Vista has driver issues that aren't present in XP MCE. Half of my dual-tuning Hauppauge PVR-500 stops working upon installation of Vista, at least until I remove Vista's bundled drivers and install the XP drivers that came with the card instead.
Of course, the major problem introduced by Vista compared to XP MCE for me is that, upon detecting that I'm using component video, Vista assumes I'm using an HDTV and "fixes" the resolution for me during the installation process, making it virtually impossible to complete until I crawl around behind my rig and connect my computer to my television with s-video instead.
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.
"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?
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.
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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.
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
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
No, the guy installed vanilla Ubuntu.
Mods really need to RTFA before they start modding people "informative".
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).
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.
It's no longer possible in Vista, though another way is to install it from the DVD, then upgrade it on top of itself. Since the Vista install is quite faster than the XP one, he would have been done with it quicker.
Ok, most people realize that the MFRs write the drivers, not MS. And yes Vista specific driver support is lacking in some areas, as moving to the new audio model, video model, network stack, etc can be tricky for native driver support in Vista.
Actually, "most people" don't really know or give a damn. If the drivers for an OS sucks, the OS sucks. Full stop.
This was the problem with Linux until recently; if you didn't have the right drivers for the hardware you wanted to use, then you couldn't do what you wanted to do -- everything else, any other benefits the OS might have, are moot. It's dead in the water.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It has been pretty obvious for quite a while that Linux has better out-of-the-box driver support than any version of Windows (or any OS really). Many Windows drivers have to be installed from CDs or over the internet.
When I installed Windows (before switching to Ubuntu) I had to use a CD to install drivers just to connect to the internet, and then I had to use Windows Update again and again (rebooting between each one) to get all the other drivers.
There's lots of support for Windows, but Windows itself actually supports very little.
To be fair, you're comparing a product released every few months to one released every few years.
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!
No. He is making a very significant point. "There's lots of support for Windows, but Windows itself actually supports very little." Everybody knows that unless Microsoft sees a self serving point to support something they don't.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
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.
Having read TFA, my take on it is that he likes the "look and feel" of Vista MCE better. Fair enough.
Having seen the "look and feel" of TFA, I would call that a glowing endorsement of MythTV.
I don't therefore I'm not.
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?