Three MythTV Linux Distros Compared

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.

Comments

MythDora?

[hal2814]

MythSwiper, no MythSwiping!

Oh man...

MythTV for PS3

[DrXym]

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.

Re:MythTV for PS3

[tji]

> The problem is I don't think there are any USB TV capture devices that work in MythTV.

The PS3 would make a good MythTV frontend (display) system. You're better off using a Linux box as the backend. That way you can still use the PS3 as a game system or Blue-Ray DVD player -- rather than leaving it in Linux mode all the time to record programs. As for tuners. the HDHomeRun is a good network-based HD tuner option.

> I have been using MythTV for something like 4 years now just because there isn't anything as good but I really hate it. It's so freaking slow and buggy. I mean once you have hundreds of recorded shows the thing just slows to a crawl. It takes forever just to delete a program. This all seems totally ridiculous considering the relatively tiny amount of data it is managing. Then there are the bugs like when it gets into some sort of bad state and the menus don't work (you can open the menu but can't select anything). Very poorly written piece of software if you ask me.

It's hard to say what the issue is from that description.

- Slow performance: All the standard Linux tuning applies. MythTV uses MySQL extensively, so tuning that performance is important.
- Slow Delete: File system choice is important. ext* is very slow in deleting files. I use JFS because it deletes almost instantly. In newer MythTV versions, there is an option to do deletes in smaller chunks to avoid this problem on ext* systems.
- I haven't seen bugs like those you described. I use 0.20.1, and it works well. MythTV is not ideal.. setup is difficult, as is configuration.. The menu systems could use some major improvements and configurability. It's definitely the worst DVR going, except for everything else.

Re:MythTV for PS3

[tji]

> any tuner device supported by linux should be usable with mythtv so if you find a USB tuner with linux support you can use it

MythTV is modular. You do the tuning/recording/processing on the backend, which talks to the frontend (display) via the network. These functions can be on the same box, but with the PS3 as a frontend, you would want a separate backend.

http://linuxtv.org/ has info on supported devices. My tuner of choice is the HDHomeRun, a network based dual HD tuner.

WARNING: Critical problem with out of date distros

[LordKazan]

Recently the free listings provider for north america (TMS' Zap2it) annouced they will be going offline on Sept 1 - a replacement ($5/month for now, hopefully reducing to $20/year in the future - schedulesdirect.org) is available but only the latest release .20.2 of stable (And -fixes and trunk in snv naturally) support using it.

If you download one of these distros make sure they have updated it with a .20.2 (post mythfilldatabase scheduling fix) otherwise you will not be able to get north american listings.

Re:And People Complain About The Many Version Of V

[LordKazan]

mythtv is just linux softwre - those distros are just rolls of their parent distros with mythtv bundled and tuned as it doesn't normally come bundled.

if you're going to watch HD it's best to compile it yourself so it can do the most cpu optimizations (make sure to enable them via the appropriate configure flag)

A possible source for guide data

[Mike Gleason]

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.

Re:A possible source for guide data

[LordKazan]

you're pretty out of date - schedulesdirect is up... and they hope to be able to reduce to $20/year eventually. try reading the thread before replying i posted about SD before you posted

MythTV distros over-rated

[halfelven]

I don't see what's the point of building a dedicated distro for MythTV. Why reinvent the wheel? Why not use a well-known, established distribution, and just create a software repository with MythTV?
A dedicated distro may be here today, gone tomorrow, if it doesn't build a large enough community. That's not what I expect from the operating system that I'm gonna use on the MythTV server that I will build next month.

I think I'm just going to use CentOS or Ubuntu (the LTS edition - long-term support) and pull MythTV from one of the popular repositories.

Re:MythTV distros over-rated

[jma05]

> I think I'm just going to use CentOS or Ubuntu (the LTS edition - long-term support) and pull MythTV from one of the popular repositories.

Because many of us already tried that and couldn't get it to work. MythTV is one of the worst software I had to set up. It is just wrong to expect an end user for a PVR to even know what a database is, let alone having to set it up and deal with the error messages, even if it something popular such as MySQL. MythTV just needs to be as easy as the commercial packages to setup.

Configure? Yeah. Update? Not so much.

[dfdashh]

I've been using my MythTV box as my primary media center for over a year and a half now. While I love to make the occasional configuration changes to meet the ever-changing needs of my family, I NEVER update unless I have a very, very good reason. Why? Because at this point I don't want a weekend troubleshooting session because I triggered incompatibilities. I guess that is just me being paranoid, though. I've never had drastic problems with Myth, but I can also attribute that to the fact that I wrote up my requirements, built the machine to them, and left it that way. No surprises! So there are some tradeoffs when using a media distribution like KnoppMyth to build out your MythTV, but sometimes they are really blessings in disguise.

Re:MythDora? (XBMC on its way)

[Anonymous Coward]

With the Linux port of XBMC underway, and very usable at this stage, Myth will have serious competition soon for (currently) its non-PVR functionality. The linux port of XBMC is completely OpenGL 2.0 optimized. Currently, in terms of UI and user friendliness, there's very little that compares to XBMC.

Installing it the painful way...

[monkeyboythom]

I'm currently trying to do what the distro should be doing for me; installing layer and application at a time.

Of course, I'm also trying to do this on a system put together from more recent hardware, the m-atx Gigabyte platform GA-MA69GM-S2H Socket which uses AM2 and the AMD 690G Northbridge. And a USB connected ATSC HDTV card.

I'm finding it's a snap to install Ubuntu, LAMP, and MythTV but almost impossible to get any further than configuration. And that is the problem. I can install WinXP and SageTV and have all these components work right now. So it still is the main problem for Linux and any distro - hardware support.

Yes, the larger question still is open versus restricted driver support. But at the end of the day, especially the present day like tonight, I'd rather have my hardware recognize a restricted driver and install it seamlessly than having the "freedom" of an open source driver. If move to open from a restricted, then shouldn't that be the incentive for hardware manufactures to provide these drivers?

Books on MythTV

[louiebeth]

I know a book just came out on MythTV: Practical MythTV (http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=1 0245) Is it any good? Anybody read it?

Some comparision....

[cesman]

I started KnoppMyth over 4 years ago, so I'm biased.

The comparison seemed rather dull and uninformed. The installation, default theme and the "running" systems are compared. In the end, it comes to "convenience". This is where the author's lack of information really shines.

To stated that one cannot install additional software on KnoppMyth is wrong. You can install a .deb or install from source. The problem comes in if you want to auto upgrade to the next release (BTW: Neither of the other options supports an auto upgrade functions. MythDora is working on it however.). Whatever additional packages you installed, you'll have to reinstall (R6 will address this). But what do you need to install (other than perhaps pineapple and some codecs ;)? And if you read tjc's guide to using the backup and restore, you'll only have to install those once.

In addition to MythTV and it's official plugins KnoppMyth includes mplayer, xine, webmin (how is that for conveniences?), rrd (hit Apache and see how your system as been performing, seems pretty convenient to me), MythWebFlash, irblaster support and so much more.

In addition to the official themes, we also include most if not all of "Juski's" http://juski.co.uk/themes are included as well. So while the author didn't like Titivillus, there is nothing stopping him or any user from using any theme. Got an ipod? What to take that show with you? Myth2ipod http://www.myth2ipod.com/is include in KnoppMyth. Or stream it with MythStreamTV.

Both NFS and Samba are included and configured. All one has to do is start the daemons. Got an nvidia based video adapter? Guess what is automatically installed on first boot? Navigate with a keyboard? KnoppMyth includes out the box support for multiple remotes. Guess which distro was the first to officially support the popular Hauppauge PVR line of hardware MPEG tuners?

The ideal behind KnoppMyth is to make it easy to get a Linux/MythTV powered PVR is a quick and easy manner. Some of you already get this... Think appliance. KnoppMyth is into it's fifth year and we'll continue to improve and develop it. Much thanks to member of the community for the improvements, ideals and support. I do wish MythDora and MythBuntu well, however as I see it... They are threading on ground already paved.

Regards,

Cecil

Re:Distro? You Want Distro? You Can't Handle the..

[TeknoHog]

How can you expect people to wear clothes, when there's so much choice?-)

Re:Why Mythtv when XBMC exists

[Abcd1234]

To my surprise, XBMC completely blows MythTV out of the water.

Weird, I had no idea you could plug a video capture card into an XBox, let alone set up XBMC to use it to record TV. Got any links?

Re:MythTV Box

[Fratz]

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Commercial_My thTV_System is a comprehensive list of pre-built boxes that work well with MythTV