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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).
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.
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.
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!
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.
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).
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.