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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.
MythSwiper, no MythSwiping!
Oh man...
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.
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.
.20.2 (post mythfilldatabase scheduling fix) otherwise you will not be able to get north american listings.
If you download one of these distros make sure they have updated it with a
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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)
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
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.
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.
df -h
> 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.
I started KnoppMyth over 4 years ago, so I'm biased.
.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.
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
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
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
How can you expect people to wear clothes, when there's so much choice?-)
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