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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.
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.
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.
Who else is going to do it? Microsoft isn't going to make a truly good PVR, because their corporate philosophy interferes; they'd want to control it, not let you do so. The open source community may come up with 80-90% of it (and I'd argue already has), but there are some things which it can't do. 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. Compatibility with premium content is another. Apple is in a position to provide both; we know they can build nice, small, quiet hardware. We know they can negotiate with content producers and not compromise EVERYTHING. So it's not going to be Microsoft, it's not going to be the open source community. That leaves no one, Apple, or some unknown third party. Apple seems like the best bet.
I suppose there's the electronics manufacturers -- e.g. Sony (too tied to locking everything down), Phillips, Toshiba, LG, Samsung, a boatload of Chinese companies... aside from Sony (which has no chance) I think they're long shots.
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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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.
Your argument would be correct with the minor exception of that pesky DMCA. 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. This renders the rest of your argument moot. Repeatedly seeing these same incorrect things spouted over and over and over again as gospel around here is really making me want to go to law school for copyright law. It's clear that many of you have no interest in actually understanding the law and what is and isn't legal. How do you expect to actually bring about the necessary changes when you can't be bothered to understand the underlying problems?
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).
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.
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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.
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