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MythTV Allows Multiple Front-Ends On Wide Range of Platforms
As the DVR becomes a much more pervasive performer in home theater setups, the level of excellence demanded by the general consumer seems to continue to rise. The open source project MythTV has been in this arena for quite a while, and now offers the ability to have multiple front-ends on your MythTV install on a wide range of different platforms. Able to run on Windows XP, Vista, Xbox, and even an Apple iPod, the new flexibility is sure to interest many consumers (and many competitors).
Anyone familiar with MythTV knows that it can use multiple front ends. A port to Windows or Mac sounds good because the monopoly makes some hardware difficult to use. It's not such a great idea if you want control of your media.
That sure reeks of a paid ad...
As a proud MythTV user, this has been pretty common knowledge. Nothing in the article is new.
What make me really excited is if I could use my XBox360 as a generic frontend with it. If it could function as MythTV frontend + netflix player, it'd be perfect. It's doubtful since Microsoft has already spent so much time just getting it to play well(read not requiring WMV encoding) with an PC or SMBFS network share, which is still doable but no recorded programs or other goodies MythTV does so well.
If any MythTV Dev's are reading this, thank you so much for the hard work!
import system.cool.Sig;
Basically, with no capability to use a cablecard (much less switched digital video), MythTV is growing increasingly irrelevant in the DVR world. Sure, you could set up a complicated system using additional cable boxes from you cable company with some sort of IR channel switching, but the expense and hassle of that will keep MythTV on the far, far fringe. And if HDMI becomes the standard, MythTV is really screwed (it's able to record off of component outputs, but not HDMI).
I truly wish MythTV were practical (I hate DRM and the hassles of moving video from one form to another as much as anyone). But with an increasingly hostile cable companies (that want to lock you into THEIR DVR's), I don't think it is or will be again. It's hard enough to even get a Tivo to work on most cable systems today (with cablecards being wonky and Tivo still not able to do SDV), much less a DIY DVR.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
To the MythTV dev team. Thanks for the sweet product. It wasn't a 1 click install-setup, but it was well worth the time. MythTV makes watching tv bearable, sometimes useful. (especially now that Science channel is on basic cable)
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
You can get a used XBox for $100. Put in a cheap hard drive. Purchase a mod chip on the cheap, or do a soft mod. Install XBMC and MythTV, and then suddenly you've got a pretty sweet setup on the cheap. I love it.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
except your an idiot...
cable company is REQUIRED by fcc to give customers cable boxes with firewire out.
myth tv can control almost all firewire boxes just fine.
MythTV doesn't enforce any DRM of any kind like the broadcast flag. Anybody familiar with MythTV knows that....
This space is not for rent.
I like freevo better than mythtv. It has a pretty interface and fits my needs. For some reason MythTV requires MS TTF fonts. I know, who cares, right?
But Freevo works nicely, and seems to be a good python design with sensible plugins.
MythTV is growing increasingly irrelevant
You would be wrong about that. The same jail the media conglomerates would like to keep you in confounds all DVR dev's. That's why an IR Blaster is important. It takes care of all that for you. Yeah, there's some compromises to piping in the video from the back of the cable box, but I just want to watch it at a convenient time so a little down-scaling doesn't bother me one bit.
And if HDMI becomes the standard
Most of you have only yourselves to blame for this because the vast majority are gladly buying into HDMI. VGA works good, digital-out works best. And guess what? No drm!!
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
There's no way cable is going to win the technology race. Your pay per play DVR won't look so great when you get the bill. I'll stick to component outputs, thank you very much, until the smoke clears. When it things get too hostile, I'll ditch the cable entirely. TV broadcast spectrum used for internet access will obsolete cable by the time all the lock in is in place.
s/your/you're/
Calling MythTV impractical and irrelevant is overly pessimistic. In the digital cable, MythTV isn't very useful; however for those of us who use analog cable (which will be the majority of Americans for a while), MythTV does have some life left. Just like VHS isn't dead as it is being slowly phased out over the next decade. Maybe there will be some progress made in the next few years.
As for me, I don't plan on getting digital cable anytime soon because I don't plan on getting an HD TV soon. Yeah HD is great but I'm waiting until they settle on a few things. First it was 720p, then 1080i, then 1080p for the sets. The resolutions that are recorded vary between the three and some broadcasts are just upconverted and not recorded in HD at all. For port connections, there was component, then DVI, then HDMI. I'm pretty sure that some people like my parents and grandparents have not plans on getting with the HD revolution either.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
My recommendation? Tivo. Hands down! It doesn't have all the features and flexibility as the other units, but it's fast and responsive - from a usability perspective. And I can even download my shows to my PC.
Windows MCE was pretty nice - but after about a month, my filesystem got corruped, and I lost everything - including the 300 CDs I had ripped (manually) to the unit! The UI was a little slow.
Then came Myth. A royal pain to get running. The features and flexibility were very nice. The worst thing about it however was the music portion of it. (MythMusic). That was horible beyond believe - especialy in-contrast to the Windows MCE, which was very very nice. MythTV's UI was kind of slow and klunky as well. I do not miss it.
Then came the Comcast HD PVR. That was too great - limited functionality and channel guides were a pain. No music, no download capability. We only went through 2 or 3 of these boxes (due to dying) during our month we owned them - when we found out Tivo firmware was available.
The Comcast HD-DVR with Tivo firmware was the worst. We went through about 3 trips to the Comcast office, dead units, 3 or 4 technician house-calls. Lost show, etc. They eventually came out with a version of firmware which at least stablized the box. It's not too bad now - but a bit clunky - not as fast and responsive. The firmware is still kind of screwed-up - gives you the wrong sounds when clicking through things - shows disappear sometimes - a few unit freezes, etc. No music - at least not our - just the crappy Comcast music channels. Oh yea, and whatever you do - don't hit the "on-demand" button - 'cause that'll just ruin your whole evening.
So for the few things we watch in HD, we use the Comcast HD-PVR with Tivo - reluctantly.
For everything else - all the reruns, and bulk of stuff we record - and music - It's all still the Tivo Series-2. It works. It's fast. It's reliable. It's responsive. It does what I want it to when I hit a button. We've never lost a show. We're on our original unit after many many years. It's simple and streightforward. I don't want to do "development" at night - I just want to press a button and watch TV. Tivo does that, and well.
The only realy upside to MythTV was that it was free...but not anymore!
I'll stick with my Freevo media PC thanks.
Why pay for TV? With the switch to digital, over-the-air TV is now probably higher quality than cable. Combine MythTV with one or two of these and you're all set.
Sure for the states it might be becoming irrelevant, but over here in the UK, DRM is not a problem. Freeview/freesat has everything I'd ever want to watch, and by definition, it's free to use on whatever platform you wish!
I have a few TV cards in our home server, streaming to a silent little Apple TV running mythfrontend. It works a treat!
I've used MythTV for about 4 years now. All that I can say is that it is phenomenal and has gotten substantially better each year. Thank you to everyone that contributed, as I am sure that most of you read /.
This is true. I just set up a Mac running the 0.21 backend/frontend via FireWire on a Comcast 6200 box.
It works very well, except that I have to use the PPC backend for the time being (on Intel).
I can't tune the 5c channels, but there are only a few that matter that are encumbered.
I am testing out Plex (osxbmc) with the Myth Frontend extension currently.
The stability of this setup leaves some things to be desired (especially, coming from a TiVo background), but it is great fun to play with.
I'd like to put together a small format PC for this sort of thing. Alas, I can't use a cheap tower, it needs to be one of those small form factors that can fit in an entertainment center. I'd like to spend as little as possible but it seems like I could easily price myself into the $500 range putting one of these together. Any good guides out there?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
So in other words, this works as a Windows Media Extender app, just with a different name because we all hate Windows. XBox and PS3 could care less what is actually serving the media. I use TVersity myself. The concept of reencoding your videos using FlashVideo or some other video format to allow viewing from a webbrowser (on the iPhone, Wii, etc), is also nothing new.
However, I have no clue who was first, TVersity, MythTV, Nero, or Microsoft, but they all do pretty much the same thing. I just had a bit better luck with TVersity than the others on streaming media that is not supported natively by my PS3 or Xbox
MythTV also works fine in the non-US parts of the world where DVB-T is pretty much standard for digital terrestrial broadcasts.
Ok troll.. this is /.
Do you have *any* links to back that up? I did the requisite googling and found *nothing*.
MythTV supports firewire access to cable boxes. MythTV can do both capture and channel changing via firewire. I currently have a MythTV box hooked up to a Motorola DCT-6200, and this allows me to record HD (as well as SD) channels. Having said that, some Cable companies will encrypt "premium" channels making this solution useless for those channels. However, for my needs at least, MythTV+firewire+DCT-6200 works fine. Throw in OTA HD channels (which in my location look significantly better than their cable versions due to compression in the latter) and life is good for my simple needs.
Calling MythTV impractical and irrelevant is overly pessimistic. In the digital cable, MythTV isn't very useful; however for those of us who use analog cable (which will be the majority of Americans for a while), MythTV does have some life left.
Well I guess the majority of Americans must be increasingly irrelevant... :-)
Personally I've been using digital cable for six years...
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Can cable companies really force you to use tv?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I truly wish MythTV were practical (I hate DRM and the hassles of moving video from one form to another as much as anyone). But with an increasingly hostile cable companies (that want to lock you into THEIR DVR's), I don't think it is or will be again. It's hard enough to even get a Tivo to work on most cable systems today (with cablecards being wonky and Tivo still not able to do SDV), much less a DIY DVR.
MythTV is only irrelevant to the extent that consumers choose to bend over and accept all the blatantly anti consumer practices of pay TV. I record all free OTA on my MythTV system in absolutely stunning HD (including the Olympics sans commercials...very cool) and from where I sit it's far from irrelevant.
Does anyone watch the output of their MythTV on anything other than their computer screen? Every time I look at MythTV, a solution for getting the video onto a TV set-- in either SD or HD is a completely unsolved, undocumented and glossed over issue. When someone solves that problem, MythTV may finally not really be a myth.
The fact that you care enough to look it up says a lot.
I like my setup:
AppleTV+Ubuntu+Freevo.
External USB DVD player.
It's a $200-$300 unmodified box that I can play DVDs from Disc or HD, And also surf and code n stuff.
Hey I'm not an early adopter like you but I thank you for being a guinea pig and all. :P Truth be told, my viewpoint is for people like my grandma who doesn't own a computer. I can't see her plunking down a few grand for an HD TV as she likes her 19" model just fine.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I recently looked at using MythTV to take care of my DVR needs, but the biggest issue was the "scrambled" signal from my cable provider. I understand this is what cable boxes do is decode or demodulate (or whatever) the cable signal. Has anyone ever heard of people attempting to hack their cable boxes so they could perform the same operations on a computer?
Please excuse my ignorance on how they alter their signals. I only spent a few hours researching the subject. How difficult a problem is this? Would each channel require a separate crack? Honestly I'm surprised I haven't heard about this anywhere, maybe I'm not looking in the right places.
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
You might be able to control the box, but right now there is no way to easily record the HD content off of the box. The amount of data is just too great. HD tuner cards in a computer are perfect for capturing HD off of the feed, but now you've lost the ability to actually change/decode channels. That's why I've never gone the MythTV route. Maybe as computers get faster it'll happen, but right now it's not possible.
If you already boycott cable precisely because they are not interoperative with anything, then MythTV's limitations and the cable companies are what's irrelevant.
MythTV has everything it needs, because if there's something it can't do, then I must not need that. I'm half joking (because logic errors are fun) but also half serious. My local cable company can go fuck themselves. I'm not going to do business with them, until they .. um .. work. If content producers don't take the revenue-increasing step of insisting that cable companies broadcast their content with unencrypted QAM, then I'm just going to pirate their stuff. And if I pirate their stuff instead of paying the cable company for it, then lack of cablecard support is not something I'll miss.
I hope everyone does this, until the studios who demand interoperability, are the only ones remaining in business.
a guide that fills the screen unlike the comcrap guild that looks stuck in SD with ads on each page.
Free HDMI cable
OPTICAL and COAXIAL audio
E-sata
RF and IR remote
E-net
DIRECTV on Demand
usb for the OTA tuner add on.
on line Recording with out having to run a sever.
and the GUI looks a lot like the TIVO comcast gui that comcast shows off on there web page.
I have the box in a cabinet under the TV and the remote works fine.
See the post I made above about recording on the Mac via FireWire.
HD is not a problem, records and plays back 1080i without issues.
Let's stop the namecalling.
The firewire boxes are a special order item in my market with a significant lead time (I guess to comply with the FCC). They don't even stock them at the local office, so 99.99999% of customers don't have them. --AND-- from what i've read, the firewire output only works for unencrypted channels in my market (so you can't record any of the premium digital cable channels).
Fail.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
You best get with the program mister! This is Slashdot, there can be only one of anything. DVD vs HDDVD vs BluRay .. it's BluRay only. KDE/Gnome/Other window manager .. it's Gnome. Wii/XBox360/PS3 .. it's PS3 (see BluRay above). TV, HDTV .. it's HDTV. OTA/Cable/Digital Cable .. it's Digital Cable. There can be no other.
The problem with Tivo is that they control the box, you don't.
When THEY want to remove functionality (e.g. 30 second instant skip) THEY just do so.
When THEY decide you can't record this particular program THEY simply prevent you from recording it.
When THEY decide that you can't keep a recorded program longer than a handful of hours THEY delete it for you.
If you feel that makes Tivo a better unit then I respectfully disagree. I find that behavior far more distasteful than a system that's a bit harder to use but works the way I want it to.
And the most interesting part of this is that you always had these rights with VCR's. Only with DVR are these freedoms being chipped away one bit at a time, and AFTER you've bought the d@mn Tivo box!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Channeling changing via Firewire or serial connections is pretty trivial to setup with Myth, additionally it now supports the hauppauge HD-PVR which records HD h.264 video from the component out of an STB, bypassing any restrictions on the firewire port that some cable companies implement. I don't have the HD-PVR but I can currently record 80%+ of the non-premium HD channels using Myth with comcast in SF.
An original XBOX running XBMC and using XBMSP (SMB works too). XBMC is one of my favorite open source applications ever. I have a Windows Server 2003 server running RAID5, about 1TB of space, and I have it loaded with Music, Movies, TV Shows, etc.. Some movies and TV shows I have are DVD rips, and some are downloaded (I know, I'm an asshole, but that's beside the point). Get the Microsoft High Definition AV Pack and you got optical audio and component video. I know it isn't HDMI, but it still looks fantastic.
Even better.. My next door neighbors, who are avid TV watchers (who isn't?) have 3 XBOXs in their house that I've built for them, and I have 2 in my house. To avoid having to stream over our Internet connections we have run a CAT5 cable between houses to link them up to my server. I also have an XBOX for my Brother, Dad, and Girlfriend. Unfortunately they are on shitty Comcast, but you know what's great about that? They still have 8Mbps+ downstream so I am able to stream shows to them over the Internet from my connection. Of course I have 20Mbps up/down fiber optic service (gotta love Surewest), otherwise that wouldn't be possible with the typical upstream bandwidth that most providers give you. I just setup the XBMC config file to point to my hostname or IP address at home and they can browse all the media files I have.
I think it's a very nice setup that isn't that difficult to implement.
You know what?
You are ABSOLUTELY right. So, what are you going to do about it?
Down to "brass tacks". Let's take a cable company. Say Rogers.
- 60ish analog channels. Work fine with MythTV
- Hundreds of SD (standard def) digital channels -- ALL ENCRYPTED. Even the ones that ALSO appear in analog.
- Some HD -- but see above point.
Rogers wants to push digital, but with THEIR converter. In fact, its the Rogers converter or the highway (as it were). To use this with MythTV, we need a converter per recording channel.
What do we do? Just say "fuck it all". It is EASIER for me (as a customized MythTV vendor), to supply a simply GUI front-end to EZTV with torrent downloading than to wire up the boxes with the doohickeys needed. And it doesn't look like a mess, either.
Now THAT is truly pathetic -- demand that the customer buy the package, and then ignore it, because it doesn't work, and download the TV from the Rogers cable modem instead.
Now, we have two problems. The customer is (probably) in the clear (if this whole dumb thing were ever aired in court), even though they are (technically) wrong. The big losers are the premium channels. Since the customer is downloading, who is checking for the actual subscription? Rogers doesn't care; they have made money. I would imagine the most aggrieved party (after the cutomer, of course) is HBO, Showtime, etc.
I expect further tightening, and a cable content arms race. After which, the cable company will simply give up. Because... greed gets in the way yet again. After all, the content providers want to make more money, so they distribute boxed sets of DVD/Blu-ray. At which point the content can be (easily) ripped and distributed (and will be, thanks to the aforementioned pissed-off customers).
Win? In order to win, the content must be made available, for a fee, and must be usable. USABLE! NOT FRICKIN' LOCKED IN! If I record, say, an episode of Weeds, and I want to burn it to a standard DVD, let me! I may even (gasp) give that to someone else! But, that's FREE ADVERTISING.
All I want to do is to be able to build out a MythTV box, with some customization, attach it to a cable feed and let MY CUSTOMER be happy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
CableCard? SDV? Eh. They all have to have an output **somewhere**, and it would be well worth it for me to buy one of these (in a few months, when Myth really supports them well) in order to have the flexibility to a) save my own HD recordings for as long as I like, b) move them to whatever box I like, and c) upgrade my DVR's storage array whenever I like.
(I currently do this with analog cable, and I'm a big fan. Now I just need some HD lovin'... :)
Is also works great for DVB-S in N.A. takes a little tweaking but I can do a lot with myth and Dish!
But by the same token - I don't decide when my grass gets cut - or how low - my landscapers do.
I don't decide what cleanser my toilet gets cleaned with, my cleaning people do
When any of these become unsatisfactory, I'll get rid of them for something else.
MythTV may be good for some people - but I was tired of sitting down on the couch in front of the TV after a long day of work, to debug why something wasn't working right.
Love it or hate it, TiVo is always there. Always on. Always working. Anything I need a a second or two away from happening. And I've never had to put an ounce of thought into it.
Don't get me wrong, I wanted to love MythTV - I still do! I envisioned spending time tying it into my house lights, alarm and sprinkler, etc. etc. etc. and having all sorts of fun. It just turned out to be so much work that I never got around to the "fun" - I never got it all working correctly - (OpenGL issues, driver issues, remote control issues).
When I had it my (then) 2-3 year old son loved penguins. The KnoppMyth windows desktop (which would display in the background when the Myth front end would crash/close/disappear) show Tux sitting on a couch watching TV. My son loved seeing this! But it kind of became a joke - whenever we'd go to watch something, it would be "Oh, oh - Penguin watching T.V. again!"
(Funnyness aside) - so then what - I get a call about if from my Wife, and have to SSH in from work to re-launch the Myth front-end? It was really cool that I could do this - but quite unfortunate that I had to.
It's not growing irrelevant in my world. Pretty much all the TV I watch is either recorded on my MythTV PVR or is something I purchased or rented on DVD.
In my world, digital cable has yet to become relevant. I suppose I could pay the cable company to let me rent two boxes and then finagle with an IR link so the PVR could change the channels on one of them, but really, I don't even have time to watch all the TV I record on basic cable. I suppose if I had the option to slap a CableCard reader in my MythTV box and then switch to digital, I probably would, but until then, the cable company is just going to have to do without the extra money.
Not only that, but it's just the frontend that has a Windows port. Support for the broadcast flag would need to be implemented on the backend.
How well does myth now deal with HD on cable providers, like comcast?
Rather than fight the system, and spend the money on tuners, backend hardware, etc, I just got comcast's HDDVR. It works well enough (the only way I can even attempt to watch the few shows I'm interested in viewing on my schedule .. otherwise the cost of cable isn't worth it).
I have my house wired with audio/video/cat5 jacks in each room. So, I really don't need to spend the money on front end systems in each of those rooms. IR receiver to IR transmitter over cat 5 to control the DVR. S-video out on the DVR downsamples to a regular TV (I'm not about to buy a bunch of flat panels while my old sets work just fine in the basement, bedroom, etc), so I can watch DVR stuff anywhere in the house, even stuff recorded on high-def channels.
The disadvantage with my setup is every room in the house can only watch one thing at a time (from the dvr...cable is fine, of course). Which is fine for me. But...if I wanted to I could connect video or cat5 to any number of sources in the future via the patch panels in the basement.
Cost was wiring (which I wanted to do for whole house audio for my soundbridge anyway), and a $50 distribution amp from radio shack. And I got to use all of my old equipment and not have to buy or build anything for a media server or multiple front ends (which have the requirement of being *silent*).
It'd be nice to have a system where I could save and organize things indefinitely, but really, I have other ways of doing some of that and it just doesn't seem like the effort to me, when the scientific atlanta box is "good enough" IOW, the consumer appliances have somewhat caught up, with the advantage of supporting HDTV and Digital channels with no effort and no tricks with IR and stuff.
CableCard is pretty much dead at the moment, due mostly to switched video and the extensive consumer restrictions requirements it entailed. The nonexistent enforcement by the FCC on the requirement that cable operators deploy it and total the lack of consumer interest in the experiment added to it's complete failure.
MythTV can capture HD video just fine using from the cable/satellite box, it's only the closed captions which are in an inaccessible form due to encryption*. Also, MythTV only needs to use IR for Dish Network boxes, DirectTV has a serial interface (using a "USB" plug), and cable operators in the US are required to implement firewire channel changing. Of course, in Europe DVB CAM systems work just fine with MythTV, as required by law. Only the USA attempted to implement the unworkable CableCard specs instead of using the tried and true DVB CAM system for access control.
*Closed captioning advocates for the deaf lobbied for the requirement to place the captions in the encrypted video stream rather than in the unencrypted portions of the stream. The rationale apparently was that it would be less likely to get accidentally lost during remux. But making it illegal to record the closed captions is an unfortunate and predictable side effect. The LOC has denied all substantial petitions for DMCA exceptions for the deaf to date, but the next administration may appoint someone more compassionate to head the Library of Congress.
What MythTV, or rather MythDVD does really well is function as a DVD Jukebox. There is nothing else out there right now for backing up your DVDs that is as painless as Myth, unless you want to spend thousands on the Kalidescope system. You pop your DVD in, import it as either a 1:1 iso, a perfect copy of the main title, or a compressed (xvid) copy. It will even pull the cover art and metadata from IMDB for you. I'd highly recommend Mythbunutu for those heading down this road.
This is one place where vista works well, in the home. (At work we have NO vista machines)
In the year we have used Vista MCE, the all important WAF has been very high, and the system overall very stable and responsive, only requiring an accasional USB tuner reboot.
I considered Myth, but mountain looked steep, and my time available for home brew about nil.
The install was almost painless,and in OZ (where the is no TiVO culture) we get free guides thanks to volunteers.
46137
I get a call about if from my Wife, and have to SSH in from work to re-launch the Myth front-end? It was really cool that I could do this - but quite unfortunate that I had to.
I hooked into the ACPI power button routines to kill/restart the X server when mythtv hung up. The backend was it's own process outside of X, so it continued to run fine when this was done.
So, all non-technical wife-types had to do when mythTV hung was to press the power button and it would take care of itself. But to be fair, by the time I stopped using it (I went off-grid) it was pretty stable - perhaps once a month a frontend reset was needed.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
The only problem is that the Cable Company is not required to let all of the channels go out unencrypted on the firewire out.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
I suspect the issues and devices (cablecard etc.) you're describing are US-specific. It's not becoming irrelevant in the rest of the world (at least not for any of the reasons you mention).
I'm using MythTV with 2 DVB-C cards and decoding pay channels without trouble. I'm currently using a softcam setup with a pay card (Irdeto 2 encrypted signal), but have used official Irdeto 2 and Viaccess CAM modules with success.
I've been using MythTV for the past 4-5 years, and am generally very happy with the product and the service I get from it.
bah! With OTA HDTV capture cards available, those of us who don't spend a fortune every month to the cable gods get great 1080i picture with all the MythTV bells and whistles. Yes, digital cable or satellite TV makes it more difficult to use MythTV, but for those who don't have to have 200+ channels of mostly crap can do just fine with MythTV and 5-10 channels of mostly crap.
I got new boxes in January (Charter called me) and I've been happily moving data over the firewire cable ever since.
And to the cens0r below. I record them on the Charter DVR and then move them to the computer. HD and everything.
Some of us have the ability to highlight text, right-click, and google it. Occasionally we'll see something interesting, and perform that operation, and browse another tab for a few minutes. We call this "having an internet connection" or alternately "having interests" or sometimes even "reading slashdot".
A cursory examination reveals the the person who "care[s] enough to look it up" has the username of TheLinuxSRC and has a subscription to slashdot. I wonder if they are interested in linux? I bet they've at least heard of it. But it's not like we're participating in a discussion about a piece of open source software or something. I betcha this guy's the only one who's ever read anything about linux here. Really, though, you have one hell of an insightful mind. I am in awe. There is only one thing to do:
Mod parent +1 Insightful!
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I have two Tivos, one with life time service, one with out. I don't want to pay Tivo the monthly fee to use the non life time service Tivo, it would be nice to be able to load something else on to it and put it to use.
I ran MythTV for 4 years, and had all kinds of problems getting perfect HD display on my TVs (old 1080i tube, new 1080P panel). I switched to SageTV specifically for their HD media extender. Unlike media extenders for MythTV, the SageTV media extender runs the standard SageTV gui, and extensions. This means I can have a silent, low power box (~10W) which does perfect HD playback in my family room, rather than a PC, and I can move the PC into the closet where my toddler can't mess with it. Since the HD Extender runs the SageTV gui, it means extensions like commercial skipping just work, and I don't have to suffer through some crappy UPnP video browsing interface.
When I moved to SageTV, I was impressed with how easy and user friendly the setup was as compared to MythTV. As an added bonus, SageTV's purchase price includes lifetime guide data, so there is no need for a Schedules Direct subscription. The only thing I miss from MythTV is the "time stretch" playback mode, where you can speed up the video (while keeping the audio at the correct pitch).
Oh, and SageTV is also multi-platform. It started on Windows, and has ports for MacOSX and Linux, can transcode videos for iPod, etc. I run SageTV on Linux.
Ditching MythTV for SageTV was the smartest HTPC move I've ever made.
Our digital cable DVR boxes have firewire out, but then why do you need Myth? The standard digital boxes just have serial, and the serial port is deactivated. I called to ask if it could be activated and was told no... basically it was IR control or bust.
In the digital cable, MythTV isn't very useful; however for those of us who use analog cable (which will be the majority of Americans for a while), MythTV does have some life left.
So basically you pay the cable company to get the channels you can get over the air? In my area, there's just over two dozen channels left on analog cable - the local networks, a few pbs channels, and a handful channels that nobody cares about (QVC, HSN, a couple of Spanish channels - not the big two of Univision and Telemundo, the local gov't channels, etc.). If I went OTA, I could actually get a few channels I couldn't get from cable (granted, most of those are networks from a different city, but still).
Just like VHS isn't dead as it is being slowly phased out over the next decade.
Have you been living in a cave for the last couple of years? New releases are not put out on VHS anymore. Most studios stopped completely in 2006 after a phase-out and almost all the rest have stopped since. The only thing left for VHS is home recording and films that are now completely out of print (no new VHS being produced and not released on DVD).
Personally, I'm not getting into the HD craze for the foreseeable future, either, but I'm also not stuck in the 90s.
End of line..
First it was 720p, then 1080i, then 1080p for the sets.
And given that the highest broadcast resolution is 1080i, and has been specified as such for at least a decade, do you expect this trend to continue?
For port connections, there was component, then DVI, then HDMI.
It's not as if they took away the older ones when they added the new ones.
Breakfast served all day!
I can pretty much echo this myself. I have a TIVO S3 with dual cablecards and despite noises about how "hard" this is to setup mine worked fine - and was the first one the tech had ever done! Prior to that I had several hacked DTIVO that I really enjoyed using until I wanted to move to HD.
I did try Myth with an HDHomerun but never quite got it working. I'd still like to in order to have a few more tuners available to record but it's not a huge deal for me right now since the TIVO is working out so well.
What I DO use the hell out of though is XBMC on Linux. I have ALL of my DVD ripped both HD and SD to the tune of 600++ movies. I have all of my music available too and one day I'll hook my pics into it too. This is capable of controlling a Myth backend so there's hoep yet for a Myth box but not anytime soon I fear. This is something I'd love to do but it's got to be made easier to install I think.
Meanwhile CableCard and encrypted channels are pushing Myth into a corner here in the States I think. I do not know how this will end up but it sure looks better for Myth overseas :(
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
While it is currently true that the FCC has regulations regarding the availability of firewire controllable cable boxes, the regulations do NOT state that the encryption level must be changed. I used a cable box with firewire for two years in MythTV setup. The only channel I received over firewire that was not available via unencrypted QAM was Universal HD, and I'm pretty sure that was a mistake. All the other channels that were encrypted over QAM were still encrypted on firewire.
The only alternative that you have right now is the Hauppauge HD-PVR, which captures analog component and transcodes it to H.264. Of course, this device isn't fully supported yet. It's an exciting future, but not quite there.
Even at the point that where the HD-PVR becomes fully functional, you'll still need to drive it with a cable box.
There is also question about how long the firewire "standard" will remain. At the recent FCC hearing on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, Intel made it very clear that they were pushing for IP based technologies and thought that the firewire standard had failed.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
In the digital cable, MythTV isn't very useful; however for those of us who use analog cable (which will be the majority of Americans for a while), MythTV does have some life left.
You haven't heard of Project Analog Crush yet, have you?
Shouldn't you be doing something useful?
Fail.
Irony Test: PASS
Here in WI, Time Warner has been adding more and more of their channels to clear QAM. I have about half of my basic cable lineup now available through my Myth box and my HDHomeRun.
Subject says it all.
The 800 Mhz Nehemiah CPU runs fanless and can render 1080i with the assistance of the CN400 hardware MPEG2 decoder. VT1625 analog output provides YPbPr component outputs, though the VGA output is just fine (no HDMI).
In the Silverstone LC08 case, I also have a slim-line dual-layer DVDROM and 500 GB hard drive. The ethernet port connects to an 5 antenna 802.11n bridge which is coupled to an 8 antenna 802.11 router. I get about 100 Mb/s over that MIMO link to a server that can stream 1080i HD MPEG2 video no problem.
As far as I can tell, the nanoITX can not render 1080p for lack of sufficient memory bandwidth, but 1080i is fine.
It's currently driving a smallish Gateway 24" 16:10 1920x1200 monitor and (via a coax SPDIF digital audio connection) an Outlaw Audio 990 receiver connected to an Odessey Audio amp and a pair (no 5.1 or 7.1 yet) of Bohlender-Graebner Radia 520 speakers.
In Liberty, Rene
I am literally about to go out and buy my MythBuntu hardware, I plan to start my build this weekend. I won't be using HDTV for some time, but the parent poster is correct.
MythTV is more useful for analogue TV.
However, that does not mean that MythTV is useless. Hauppague has come out with a new device that works with Myth that is nearly impossible to block.
From MythTV wiki:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_HD-PVR
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
With firewire though does the remote work fine? (like IRBlaster or whatever they call it)
And does the firewire mandate apply in Canada too? (stupid question but with our current government everything we do is a stupid version of what you've done. =/)
Digital TV doesn't need encoding. It can just write the bits that fly in from the antenna to the hard drive. It can recompress into another format if you like, but that needn't be done in real time.
Remote works fine for changing channels; albeit channel changes are slow. Also, I don't know if the CRTC mandates firewire in Canadian cable boxes. But I'm in Vancouver using Shaw Cable and firewire was enabled out-of-the-box on the DCT-6200 I bought at Best Buy.
MythTV does support DVB tuners, though. If you're in Europe, that means you can watch basically everything. In North America, you can get an ATSC tuner and watch broadcast digital TV (ATSC is more or less DVB plus some extra stuff). I've also heard that certain North American satellite providers use the DVB standard, so assuming you had a way to decrypt the signal, you could theoretically get that into MythTV as well.
I need some help here. I have a really powerful file server that I use to host all my media. However, I use XBMC on an original XBOX to play those files over a Samba share. Pretty simple. But, the XBOX can't play 720p content, and my projector does. In addition, my noisy 2U file server sitting in the next room can play it, but its noisy and has no sound card and only VGA out.
The question is, is there anyway I can have the beefy file server pre-process and render the video in HD format and steam that content to the XBOX and then the XBOX simply redirect that content to the video card and whoosh.. out the projector? It seems like every front-end/back-end solution all require the front end to decode the video format and render it before sending it out to the video card for display on you TV/Projector?
Is there anyway to simply stream the already decoded and rendered HD content across CAT 5 cables, to a computer, and then to that computers video card for display?
The problem with firewire (at least as I understand it after recently looking this up and talking with Comcast) is that the FCC requirement ONLY applies to HDTV signals. You only get that firewire box if you pay for the package and the box. Oh yeah, and the box ships with Firewire disabled by default.
If you don't want to shell out the money for an HDTV box and package, you're out of luck with firewire.
Further FYI, I also asked Hauppauge about CableCard Tuners, they basically said they're too expensive and unstable, and so they don't plan on selling any in the near future. (Maybe if enough slashdotters and others showed vocal interest they might reconsider?)
I'd love to set up a Mythbox, but I'm stuck in this wonderful cable company created void where they are turning off analogue stations, won't allow you to view the digital signal without a box or CableCard, and have made it impossible to find a third-party cable box or tuner.
Well Jack Valenti's corpse, maybe. Unfortunately the senator from disney is still in office.
If I ran for congress, I would never win as my platform would be to roll back copyrights to 15 years and gut the patent system.
Let people innovate, for crying out loud.
The entertainment industry has been dragged kicking and screaming from one bucket of money to the next.
CDs will kill the Music industry! Billions of dollars later...
VCRS will kill us! Billions of dollars later...
DVDS will ruin the movie industry! Many, many more Billions of dollars later...
repeat ad nauseum
I don't think you know what you are talking about. Every single major cable company still offers the basic cable lineup over analog cable.
I don't plan on ever going digital because it costs more and requires that stupid converter box. If they force everything to digital then I'm just going to cancel my cable altogether. I have been thinking about canceling my cable anyway and going with the high-end Internet connection. For probably the last 10 years there are only maybe 4 cable channels I actually watch and nowadays the only channel worth watching is the History channel.
And to the cens0r below. I record them on the Charter DVR and then move them to the computer. HD and everything.
So, the only extra thing you need to be able to use your home-rolled HD DVR is an HD DVR from your cable company. Gotcha.
This guy's the limit!
This was similar to my setup a few years back before I moved to the sticks and had to switch to satellite TV.
An interesting thing that I discovered was that the On-Demand movie channels were broadcast in the clear on the QAM channels. (I also had a Dvico Fusion HDTV which could pull in the QAM channels, but it didn't work too well in Myth at the time.) The amusing part was the movie would stop and go backwards when the person watching it would pause it and rewind, etc.
You can also tie a shell script to a button on the remote for this. I named that key the Wife Acceptance Key (it's the Start button on our PlayStation 2 remote that I repurposed for my Myth box).
That said, I agree with the GPP on Myth eventually becoming too finicky for something I used every day. Everything was great until an update hosed the ATI drivers - which required buying a new video card. Which required rebuilding the whole setup. Which wasn't what I'd call 'fun'. Then we upgraded to a new LCD and HD and it's basically game over. I can plug in via the FireWire port, but then you HAVE to use Myth as the tuner (-2 points for Wife Acceptance) - but that's a moot point since the new graphics card won't handle the HD anyway.
In short, every time anything changed, it's resulted in me having to drop even more money on the box. It started simple enough, and the promise of no commercials (automatic commercial skip works REALLY well) combined with burning shows off to DVD garnered enough Wife Acceptance Factor to cover it. But it's becoming harder and harder to justify spending any money to keep up when that cash could be simply thrown at TiVo for a FINISHED solution - no hours of dicking around necessary. As it stands, I'd basically have to replace every component in the pipeline to handle the HD playback. So it sits idle.
I also really wanted to have Myth be the ultimate answer, but there really are too many shortcomings involved. Playing the upgrade/hardware game is lame. No integration with my existing (iTunes based) music library is lame. Taking THREE HOURS to burn 2 hours of video content to a disk is lame. No simple card based capture support is lame (though this is Comcast's fault). Commercial skip sure is cool, but it's not worth all of the other tradeoffs.
Culture is more than commerce
Aside from the fact that the OP is a blatant troll, think about it for a second.
Caring about Linux, OK... but why do you care what Linus does at home?
Ubuntu runs on PS3, and there's now an accelerated video driver running on its SPU DSPs. I play HD (1080p) videos on my 50" HDMI DLP TV all the time, and they look fantastic.
But the driver is in beta. X itself needs the drivers to be improved, so video can play back in desktop windows, etc.
But with just a little more tweaking, the PS3 would be a fantastic MythTV frontend. $400 or less for 1080p, Blu-Ray, 5.1 optical audio out, Bluetooth/WiFi...
It's FOSS. If you help the project, you might just put PS3/Linux over the edge into a simple media terminal that destroys Windows and Mac attempts to dominate home media centers.
--
make install -not war
except your an idiot...
wait, who has an idiot?
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
Ever hear of the anal log hole?
You do realize that you're going to be required to go digital in Feb. 2009, right? Not HD, just digital. That means a digital converter box and some method of controlling it from MythTV (such as an IR blaster or maybe serial - no idea what those converters have).
Well I don't know about the USA but in Australia there's a lot of FTA digital (SD & HD) content available. In fact more good stuff than I have time to watch and MythTV is simply brilliant for recording it. Way better than my old topfield.
A good analogue to mpeg2 capture card along with an ir blaster does the trick fine for me. Of course, a decent budget friendly card only supports at best s-video input. Won't be long though before we start to see cost effective analogue component (YUV or RGB) capture cards available. (I know they exist. I said "cost effective").
So you're saying MythTV is still useful for people who, like your grandmother, don't own a computer? That does not compute.
Basically, with no capability to use a cablecard (much less switched digital video), MythTV is growing increasingly irrelevant in the DVR world.
Is it now? I find that my 2-tuner system works just wonderfully on the analog signal I get from the cable company. HDTV still has quite a long ways to go before it supplants regular ol' NTSC video on the local cable providers' offerings, and there are plenty of us out there that still don't think it's worth the premium being charged.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
You do realize that only applies to over-the-air broadcasts, and cable companies will still be providing NTSC-standard feeds for years to come?
Ever hear of the anal log hole?
Does that mean Sensenbrenner is a "Log Cabin Republican"?
John
Calling MythTV impractical and irrelevant is overly pessimistic.
Calling MythTV practical and relevant may be overly optimistic. Sure, you may be just a computer, a tuner, and a few clicks away from a Myth box, but to my 70-year-old in-laws, it's as unreachable as the moon.
Strangely enough, they had no problems replacing their TV with an HD TV, or using the DVR built into their satellite receiver. And they love it! The signal is crystal clear. My mother-in-law records her soap operas during the day and watches them at night. They pause TV to answer the phone. They use the grid to find shows to watch, and no longer have a paper TV Guide laying around.
I certainly wouldn't have guessed that my in-laws would have adopted "modern technology" -- after all, they don't now and may never own a computer. But to them this is just a "new TV" and I think every American, regardless of age, is genetically predisposed to being able to figure out how to watch TV.
John
First it was 720p, then 1080i, then 1080p
Isn't 720p functionally equivalent to 1080i? Maybe you meant first it was 480i, then 480p (EDTV), then 720p/1080i, and now with HD-DVD/BD there is 1080p.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
But not the satellite companies. I hate my cable company far to much to ever use them again for anything.
Wow you mean I can get 80 channels for free? Silly me for paying the cable company for channels like Food, USA, Bravo, CNN, MSNBC, and the like when I could get them for free. You have only 24 analog channels. Man sucks to be you. In my area, most of the HD channels are just HD broadcasts of SD channels. There are only a dozen or so real HD channels. I don't feel like paying twice as much for 12 more channels.
I don't know about you but I know I don't speak for everyone. I know many people who still have VHS. Like my grandma. She can't be bothered to get a DVD player. She has her VHS tapes and that's how she like it. We can't get her to upgrade from a 19" TV for petes sake. There will come a time when she has no choice but she's happy with VHS. My point is that not everyone is jumping on HD right away like you and me.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You do realize that HD change over is only for OTA broadcasts right? That doesn't affect cable yet.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
No I'm saying people don't jump to new technology like my grandma. My grandma is likely to keep using analog cable and not switch to digital anytime soon.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
What's more unfortunate is that you didn't know how to configure it so that a button on the remote resets it for you. And even MORE unfortunate is that you didn't know how to launch it from a batch script that automatically relaunches it when it crashes.
You're right. It's not as if there was some kind of mystical "High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection" system added which would screw up the picture quality if it detected that you hadn't paid enough money for your HDTV. That would be ridiculous.
Yeah, except you've obviously never tried this. It's insanely unstable, and the cable company just 5C encrypts everything anyway. And you get the pleasure of paying for that cable box.
I ran MythTV for years on nothing but a digital cable in. HD and SD worked great, but I was screwed if they ever decided to move the channels around and I got tired of spending all my time administering.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Yeah, sadly Comcast in Houston designates everything except HD OTA as "premium."
But I'm not worried. CableCARD, er, tru2way, er, Sonic Death Monkey will make it all better someday...
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Wow you mean I can get 80 channels for free? Silly me for paying the cable company for channels like Food, USA, Bravo, CNN, MSNBC, and the like when I could get them for free. You have only 24 analog channels. Man sucks to be you. In my area, most of the HD channels are just HD broadcasts of SD channels.
That's pretty much true of the HD here, as well, but those channels you listed are all digital here. I suppose they did it to make room for the 3 seperate channels for HBO-HD, Showtime-HD, etc. Yes, that's right. They don't just provide one HBO-HD, but 3! And they're all the same, not HBO-HD, HBO2-HD, HBOW-HD, or whatever combo.
The initial reason I went with digital cable instead of analog was because I needed the internet service they offered and you couldn't get it without upgrading to digital cable. Complete BS on their part, but it was them or dial-up, which doesn't play nice with the multiple RDC/VNC linkups I sometimes need for work. At the time, there were over 100 analog cable channels. A little over a year ago, most of those went digital.
End of line..
Thank you sir. What had bothered me was that the GGP had been moderated Insightful at the time, thus making me wonder.
/bow
sound so silly.
From what I've seen, not even Cableco-sanctioned Cablecard devices work properly, and I've never seen a PC-based PVR that actually works with cablecard, not matter what operating system it's running.
Cablecard depends on the providers -- Comcast, TW, etc -- letting it work, and they haven't shown any signs of that (though if you want to lease a PVR for $15/month, that can be arranged).
So what can MythTV do that Cablecard devices and/or CATV provider boxes can't?.
For one, they can capture just about anything you can throw at it. Input 1 of my machine is an analog capture from the stock Directv box, controlled via serial cable.
Inputs 2 and 3 are digital HD OTA channels captured with rabbit ears and an HD Homerun. Rabbit ears may seem a bit quaint, but try testing the quality of HD broadcasts OTA vs cable and you'll see pretty quickly that cable HD is not quite what it's cracked up to be.
Pretty soon input 4 will be HD channels in HD (as well as SD channels) from Directv via the Hauppage HD-PVR component capture device.
Plus I have Mythfrontends in my office and my bedroom.
I forget. Who else will give me 1TB+ of storage, three output locations, three HD inputs plus one SD input, not to mention CD archiving and playback, DVD archiving and playback, photo archiving and playback, emulator frontend, and (why the heck not) RSS reader? Let's just throw realtime weather forecasts and radar into the mix.
Did I mention you get all this for the cost of hardware? And (if you're in the US) the listings data runs $20/year?
And if you want 10TB of storage and 20 output locations, it still is only the cost of hardware?
I agree. I sure wish MythTV were practical and weren't so irrelevant. Maybe then I could stop watching my TV and start fiddling with it again.
That multi front-end thing is really just a myth... I use MythTV as a jukebox (i.e. playing only videos and music - no TV tuner) and it does NOT work out the box. Instead of transmitting the video similar to when transmitting a captured stream, the egg-heads over at MythTV decided it would be fine to display the video entries as reported by the DB, but make you go fiddle about with nfs mounts etc to get the actual video "streamed" to the front end. Ditto for covers. Ask your mom to set up an nfs mount. For this decision alone, the project should die.
How is your grandma new technology if she's still using analog? pfft. You're right, I'm not going to switch to her. I'll keep my own grandma who has a computer, cable modem, and digital cable. She's 82 years old by the way. OK so I'm having a little fun at the expense of your grammar. hehehe.
Still, broadcast TV has to go to digital by February 2009. Many stations have already made the switch and are broadcasting over the airwaves in 1080i. Most cable subscribers I know in my area have a digital box and only use the analog for the extra TVs they don't want to pay for another box to use. I don't know what area you're in, but most people in the southeast (SC, GA, FL, VA, TN, etc) have access to high def TV through cable and broadband. My father got a high-def capable TV 5 or 6 years ago. I got one 2 years ago. This is not "new" technology for us... and I live in South Carolina!
I'm not sure why you think we're guinea pigs. The technology has been around for a long time and high-def programming and TVs will soon be in the majority. Even my slow-to-move to new tech friends are thinking of buying blu-ray players if/when they reach the $200 range! Blockbuster already has shelves of blu-ray titles in their stores! They plan to phase out regular DVDs for them.
Now, granted, HDTV is just a step on the road to streaming media through the internet (like hulu.com ), but it's not some new-fangled technology that hardly anyone is using. Practically every TV in stores is now HD and there are a lot of people who have them already. The change is just a matter of time, and frankly... I don't know anyone in my family or any of my friends that don't already own an HDTV -- including grandma.
I'll be setting up Myth soon, but I'm not sure I'll even bother setting up a recording backend. It'll be mainly to rip and play my DVD collection. Myth will have a future even without recording from TV.
Isn't it possible to decode the encrypted channels in software?
Surely you just need to read the key, which you must have if you paid for the channels... Or you can probably obtain pirate keys from somewhere too.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The situation is even worse for those of us outside the US...
TV shows typically come out in the US anything from a few weeks to a few months before they're shown here, if they get shown here at all.
So my choice is....
Wait the prescribed amount of time for a show to be broadcast here...
Risk hearing spoilers on the internet before i can watch the actual show.
Pay for the "premium" tv service which carries these channels.
Sit through commercials (despite paying for the channels, i have to watch commercials aswell??).
Have to pay extra for the tv company supplied dvr if i want to watch at a time convenient to me.
Still have to watch it in the location of the tv company supplied dvr.
Have limited space in the supplied DVR for long term storage, and risk losing the recording completely at the whim of the tv company (eg expired/changed decryption keys).
Or:
Download from a torrent within minutes of the show airing in the US, with commercials stripped out, for free, and have the ability to transfer the show to a device of my choice and watch it wherever and whenever i please.
I know which one is best for me.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Can cable companies really force you to use tv?
Use, no. Subscribe, yes. They can price their basic cable TV + high-speed Internet package at nearly the same price as high-speed Internet only.
MythTV doesn't enforce any DRM of any kind like the broadcast flag.
Which is exactly why television programming providers encrypt their cable channels: so that they don't work with MythTV.
I don't the the "news" side of this.
Also the text sound a lot like a "feature show" of MythTV. Dude, you can advertise on Google and get more audience than this.
All others of us already know MythTV and we are not crippled, we can go to the features page of it's site!
In the advert Charter runs supposedly to alert people to the Feb OTA analog cutoff, they state that after February CABLE SUBSCRIBERs with analog sets will also be affected and will be able to recieve service with a digital box.
I suspect that it'll come down to numbers of lost subscribers. I sure as heck would not pay to rent a box for each TV in the house. The only reason I use cable is because they offer analog in addition to digital.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Here in Atlanta most of the cable companies have been much slower in turning off the analog side. Charter and Comcast are still offering most of the traditional "expanded" channels (like SciFi) as analog. I did get one digital box but all it offers is 2-3 extra channels (G3, Vs, ???) and VOD. FWIW Charter appears to be planning to cut off analog entirely in Feb, but I don't know what Comcast is going to do.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
FWIW, I have a Tivo HD with 2 cablecards from Comcast and it works without any problems at all.
I doubt that your 70-year-old in-laws would be using Linux either, but that doesn't make Linux impractical or irrelevant.
I guess I don't see the problem. Then again...I don't see the need for paid channels like HBO, etc. I prefer to watch my movies in widescreen format, and from what I've seen..the pay channels don't do that, they are still pan and scan.
So..I see no need for pay channels, and hence no need for set top box.
Heck, as it is now...I only have a high speed internet connection through the cable company. I split is and one end runs into my cable modem. The other end, splits again, one end into my Haupauge card, and the other into my HDHomerun unit. So, for no extra payment, I also get full analog extended basic, along with all the unencrypted HD channels I want, in addition to HD coming in FTA.
I gotta say with all this, I have MORE tv than I can watch, and I am a TV junkie too. I mean, when I wake up or walk in the house....the first thing to come on, is the tv. It stays on till a timer turns it off when I crash at night. Yes, the tv is my nightlight.
So, I gotta say....MythTV is hardly no longer relavent.
You can use it to get a lot of content, and at a cheap price too.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yes and no. 1080i is 1920x1080, 720p is 1280x720. Correcting for progressive versus interlaced, 1080i is equivalent to 540p. So you've got 1920x540 versus 1280x720. 982,800 versus 921,600 pixels in each 1/60 second field.
So in dead pure numbers, 1080i has almost 7% more information.
Whether it makes a difference depends on two things, assuming the source is "pure" and hasn't been reconverted over and over. One, will what you are watching benefit from more horizontal pixels, or more vertical pixels? Tennis would tend to prefer more vertical, while football would look better with more horizontal ones. And, what can your display device actually display? And how good is it at up/down converting?
I have an old, but fairly capable, RPTV. It is beautiful. My friend has a newer, but cheaper, 1080 lcd. It looks like ass for everything because its processing stinks, and the LCD panel is slow.
MythTV also works fine in the non-US parts of the world where DVB-T is pretty much standard for digital terrestrial broadcasts.
Mine worked fine with my sky box too -- RS232 cable to receive what channel the ox is on, and an IR-blaster like box to change it down the second RF input.
I then tried upgrading the hard drive, and accidentally short-circuited my PSU. Doesn't work now... Mythtv will never win until it's immune from dropping a screwdriver between 12V and 0 rails while the machine's on.
I used to be a huge MythTV fan, ran a family server for years, kept up with all the updates and tweaks, despite the constant hassle.
Then, on a whim, I tried the demo of SageTV (from SageTV.com). Trivial installation. Support for Windows, Linux, and MacOS (for *both* server and client). Slick look and feel. Extensible by third party add-ons. And it *just* *works*. The relatively low purchase prices get you listings (no fighting with zap2it importing, or now the per-year listings. Lost cost, but still a cost.)
The PlaceShift licenses (about $30, I think) allow add-on viewing stations, which can be any operating system, or even a $99 standalone box.
Sorry if this sounds like an ad; normally I'd lean towards the open source solution. But I found the Myth UI a bit lagging, somewhat awkward, and could never get additional viewing stations to perform well enough for normal use.
SageTV just works. It does an adaptive-bandwidth streaming thing for viewing over the web, too, which works surprisingly well.
Just an option to consider, since they have a free trial. (Time limited for the server/client, I think, and plastered with "trial" on the screen for their "placeshifter.")
The third party web interface is far better than Myth's, IMO, too.
One main reason I went with it, was some of the DVB-decoding software I use works a lot better on Windows, so Myth wasn't an option. But if I were do another Linux-based server, I'd seriously consider Myth again. :)
and
It seems to be somewhat of a one-man tech operation, which is probably why it's so successful and works so well
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Freeview/freesat has everything I'd ever want to watch,
Guess you're not interested in Cricket? And the 45 min summary on Five in the evening doesn't count.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Actually..isn't a problem...you just gotta have a pretty decent processor in your PC, if you wanna record 2 HD channels at once and view a 3rd at the same time. But, a tuner like the HDHomerun makes tuning and watching HDTV content on MythTV a BREEZE...it works great.
And another benefit...with the cable companies often remapping their HD content, many tv's out there, like my friends' Samsung ones...cannot tune in the cable co's unencrypted HD content, whereas I can by scanning with my HDHomerun...hell, I even found free channels where they run the On Demand stuff...is fun to watch what other people are watching on there....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Get a BRAIN!
Morans
/mullet
If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.
1080p is currently available from Dish Network and will be available from DirecTV at the end of the month.
Calling MythTV practical and relevant may be overly optimistic. Sure, you may be just a computer, a tuner, and a few clicks away from a Myth box, but to my 70-year-old in-laws, it's as unreachable as the moon.
If Myth-TV and Linux are a bit much for them to handle, they might consider Eye-TV on OS X. I know someone over 85 using it with no problems. (except maybe being addicted to it)
There are USB-connected tuners available that support ATSC, NTSC and Clear-QAM all in one unit. That's the U.S. version, there are European versions also. Setup is a trivial task.
Use it with a 24" iMac and you'll have a display that'll handle the full 1920*1080 detail of 1080i.
Myth's inability to use cable cards is not really Myth's fault. It's the cable industry's fault for wanting to DRM their garbage and only being willing to work with M$. Add to it that I only know of one company (ATI) making pc tuners that can take cable cards I can see why nobody on the Myth side is trying to crack cable card DRM.
As for HDMI becoming standard, I hope that it never does. That is just another layer of DRM to add to the mess. Allowing HDMI to happen will only allow the hardware companies to "accidentally" lock out your media equipment unless you happen to buy it all from one company.
Windows is as solid as quicksand.
There is also question about how long the firewire "standard" will remain. At the recent FCC hearing on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, Intel made it very clear that they were pushing for IP based technologies and thought that the firewire standard had failed.
Two red flags here: first, Firewire allows isochronous transport,
so it can deliver glitch-free program material. There are IP
workarounds, but the Firewire solution is effective and
trouble-free. IP delivery requires lots of slop in the timing,
because it doesn't have any way to preallocate bandwidth to
the time-critical data.
Intel has 'not invented here' feelings about Firewire, which are
not to be taken as expertise. Intel doesn't think Firewire
has failed, they just think they don't own it.
Second red flag: why would IP be useful? I've used Firewire
as the medium for TCP/IP, it works fine, but what is the
supposed advantage to IP? Do they imagine they will be
able to fix some kind of solution that works in all consumers'
wired and wireless network environments? A solution that
will be future-proof?
Anyone familiar with MythTV knows that it can use multiple front ends. A port to Windows or Mac sounds good because the monopoly makes some hardware difficult to use. It's not such a great idea if you want control of your media [slashdot.org].
The link you provided indicated that NBC had enabled the broadcast flag on certain shows at the end of last season, and that it affected Windows Media Center. I did not see mention of Apple. One of the shows listed is one that I regularly recorded with Eye-TV, the OS X based tuner/PVR solution. I did not encounter any problem making or playing the recording on a Mac. There certainly is DRM on video from Apple sources such as iTunes, but I have seen no indication of anything inhibiting ATSC PVR recording on the Mac.
Although I like Eye-TV, I'll also be trying the Mac MythTV front end once I have suitable hardware for the Linux MythTV backend. The ability to support more internal SATA storage and eSATA external drives at low cost is appealing. Hopefully the scheduler supports some fancier things too, such as automatic control of antenna change relays for getting some channels in different directions.
Cablecards only matter if you are using your local landline cable monopoly.
Otherwise, they are COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT.
The ability of the S3 Tivos to take cablecards is overhyped.
OTOH, analog capture solutions like the Hauppauge 1212 are now
on the market. Instead of being restricted to just my local
(rather crappy) landline cable provider, I can continue using
my satellite provider.
If you would be satisfied with a stock Tivo, there's a good
chance you would be oblivious to the differences between it
and the DVRs that the providers offer.
Yeah, the same thing that allows Tivos to be the only option
for your local cable provider means that it's also locked out
of Dish and DirecTV just as much as MythTV is.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"digital cable" is nothing to write home about.
All DVRs have been successfully using "digital cable" since
they were first released. This was true of my first S1 Tivo
and it remains true of my current MythTV rig.
What poses a problem for any 3rd party DVR solution not Tivo
is HD encryption.
The landline providers have snookered everyone into thinking
they need some sort of STB in order to have cable in High
Definition. The cablecard is still an STB if even only a very
compact one.
There's no good reason the signal can't come across the coax
as something tunable by any ATSC tuner like it was for NTSC.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If you are interested in recording OTA stuff then a HD OTA
card or a box like the HDHomeRun is pretty simple to deal
with.
If you have a cable box, that will continue to function
as before. It's probably already digital.
Even a digital HD cable box won't necessarily force you
to use some sort of HD output or converter. Any DVR setup
that requires another box will be just like any similar
setup that you would have had with an S1 or S2 Tivo.
HBO on an S1 Tivo? Same setup.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Or you could get boxes ready made.
There's an entire subculture of the PC industry dedicated to this.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Your sarcasm ignores one key problem...
For many of us, the only cable providers we would be willing to
pay for also LOCK OUT EVERY OTHER PVR OPTION including Tivo and
the "trusted" ati-only version of Vista MCE.
This is like back to the pre-VCR era.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You might be able to control the box, but right now there is no way to easily record the HD content off of the box. The amount of data is just too great.
If the data is for just one channel and is still compressed it shouldn't be a problem.
Perhaps you're using some pretty old hardware? From what I've seen, decoding usually taxes a system more heavily than simply moving the data. If external USB 2 and Firewire tuners are easy to use for broadcast ATSC 1080i, why would data from a cable box be any more difficult to take?
I've seen both types of tuners work fine on an early-release MacBook laptop (2 years old).
Typical off-air 1080i shows I've seen eat up about 6 GB an hour. IIRC recent large/cheap SATA drives in a desktop can move roughly that much in a minute, so the disk system is very lightly taxed. Even over USB 2, copying 1 GB a minute seems typical.
Recording two 1080i shows while playing back a third is very doable.
For most people, CPU performance when decoding is more of an issue. Needs depend on the codecs used. The MPEG2 of broadcast ATSC is less demanding than something like x.264 720p. Those GB .mkv tv episodes on the torrent sites generally do make older hardware choke.
Moving uncompressed digital video would be much more of a chore but there is no need to do that! ATSC 1080i HD broadcasts are getting around 100:1 compression. Most cable programs are likely to be compressed even more than broadcast digital.
(raw 1080 at 8 bit per color RGB at 30 frames per second would take 180 megabytes per second)
I find it strange that Linus uses Windows Media Center instead of MythTV...
{{cite}}
Linux violates 235 Microsoft patents.
{{cite}}
In the last 6 years has HD TV changed? Yes. Where there issues with sets in the the early sets that don't exist today or are easier to deal with? Yes. Has the price of HD TV dropped significantly? Yes. If you want to be be an early adopter and deal with these issues that's your choice.
How many HD channels can you get? Are they far more than the number you could get 5 or 6 years ago? Are these channels really in HD or just up converted? etc.
HD will become the norm someday. Not everyone is jumping to get it today. Some people won't get a new TV even if they switch over to digital. They'll get a HD converter for OTA broadcasts and use their existing TV. Why? Because not everyone feels the need to spend a few grand on a HD TV.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If MythTv really wants to open the floodgates, it needs to make a LiveCD that works on the PS3. Use the Mplayer that was already made to work on the SPUs (so no extra work as far as programming goes) stick it with a cool frontend and include the drivers that work with USB tuners.
I know people will say "well then do it, it is a free project." And to that I will say I have tried. There exists everything out there- drivers for PS3 and Plextor USB devices, a SPU mplayer, and the fact that the PS3 can use non game OSes. Its just that after months of work I was not skilled enough (sorry world) to put such a distro together.
But imagine- if there was a way by burning one CD and buying one device (or two if you want dual tuning) that would turn PS3s into DVRs. It could open a whole new market for MythTV. Unfortunately the MythTV developers (especially the ones making the LiveCD or Mythbuntu) are only focused on PCs.
Oh well...that is why I have both a PS3 and a PC hooked up to my TV. The luxuries of nerd I guess...
Open Source Sushi
You might be able to control the box, but right now there is no way to easily record the HD content off of the box. The amount of data is just too great.
So I take it you haven't tried. I record, transcode, and play back HD content all the time on my MythTV box, and it's just a sad little Opteron 1.8GHz
cable company is REQUIRED by fcc to give customers cable boxes with firewire out.
source please.
and learn how to spell.
Why bother posting when it's obvious you don't have a clue WTF you're talking about? Are you JonKatz posting under a new name? I've been using MythTV to record HD from a cable box over FireWire for probably at least two years now. I've been using an ATSC tuner (in the same box) for the same purpose for a bit less time. Channel changing on the cable box happens over FireWire; the tuner, of course, can be set to whatever channel you want. I have no IR blasters, but all of my sources (the two HD sources and the two SD sources provided by a PVR-500) can be tuned to whatever channels are available on that input. My backend uses a 400GB drive for recordings, and that wasn't even the largest size available when I bought it (let alone today).
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Base = OS.
In the digital cable, MythTV isn't very useful
Really? Weird. I have digital cable... picked up a couple STBs up on eBay for $20 each, a couple IR blasters from irblaster.org for another $20 (which work like a charm... I've never once missed a tune), and I can record the full gamut of content I have access to. I plan to use a similar setup for HD, once support for the Hauppauge HD-PVR becomes stable (and I have the capacity to view HD content :).