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Three MythTV Linux Distros Compared

Posted by Zonk on from the penguins-put-on-a-show dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Linux.com has a comparison article up looking at three MythTV-focused Linux distributions. The piece looks at Mythdora, Mythbuntu, and KnoppMyth, with an eye towards ease of installation and the actual utility of the install. From the article: 'For regular system maintenance, KnoppMyth simply isn't in the same ballpark as MythBuntu and MythDora. The live CD heritage of Knoppix means you cannot update individual packages, which is fine if you like that, but for an always-on system like a MythTV back end, I'd prefer flexibility and configurability of a mainline distro. When all is said and done, if I were building my TiVo replacement today, I would do it with MythDora. MythBuntu shows a lot of promise, and I will give the final 7.10 release another look (in part because I run Ubuntu on my desktop machines), but it isn't ready yet.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by SourceForge.

2 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. MythTV for PS3 by DrXym · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The PS3 can run Linux but so far it's been regular Linux distributions. MythTV sounds like a natural fit for a device which has practically everything in place to be a kickass multimedia console. It would be cool to see a MythTV dist for the PS3 that boots straight into the UI and also works with any plugged in USB devices like TV tuners.

  2. A possible source for guide data by Mike+Gleason · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's been some talk about getting a subscription service running for MythTV users; if I recall, the goal was to get it going for $5/month.

    Here's an option that could be considered: buy a BeyondTV license from Snapstream, then use your username and password along with a little reverse engineering to login legally to their guide service. BeyondTV's guide data is included with your purchase -- no monthly fees. Currently it costs $70, so after a year it would have paid for itself at the proposed $5/month.

    That said, I should say I'm pretty pleased with the actual BeyondTV software, even though it is Windows-based. I spent about 2 weeks trying to get Myth (MythDora) and Freevo to work at all on a pretty vanilla new Dell PC with new hardware reported to be compatible. I downloaded BTV just to see if the hardware was to blame, and after a grand total of 15 minutes, I had a working PVR with multiple tuners. The software is customizable as well, so I can do nightly batch processing like I was planning to do with the Linux box, although the included Xvid transcoding works automatically if you want to do that.