Preview the New MythTV User Interface

Tombstone-f sent in a cool update on a project that I continue to keep an eye on. MythTV has become a dominant force in the do-it-yourself media-mega-box space, so any improvements to the UI matter significantly. "One of the biggest new features of the next version of MythTV (version .22) will be its new user interface. This new interface will offer many new features to MythTV, including animation, better interactivity, and faster and easier development for themers and developers alike." I think it still has a ways to go to compete with some of the more mainstream PVR boxes in terms of minimalism and good use of whitespace, but hopefully the improvements will get more people into the door.

Comments

Re:Pointless chrome

[LordKronos]

Huh? What installer? This is MythTV. It has no installer (other than a makefile). If you are thinking of Mythbuntu, Mythdora, Knoppmyth, or something like that, the guys on the MythTV team have little or nothing to do with any of that.

Re:News?

[LordKronos]

Actually, this isn't a minor update. It is a significant rewrite of the user interface that has been in the works for years (the ticket for this new UI was opened in June 2005). However, this isn't something that is going to be so significant to the end user directly. A lot of what you'll see come out of this will be subtle. The bigger benefit of this is for developers. Both code developers and theme developers. I have a bit of experience doing both for MythTv, and from what I've seen this is going to be a cool change. It's not news for TV watcher, but I think it is for nerds (or at least some of us).

Re:Pointless chrome

[duguk]

Have you checked the MythTV Wiki for your HDTV card, the MythTV Wiki for your Remote Control, oh yeah and the MythTV Wiki for for Graphics Card? All three are listed on the Wiki, looks quite well supported to me.

Re:Pointless chrome

[dfdashh]

Perhaps he's talking about mythtv-setup.

Re:Just dumped MythTV

[Stiletto]

Do what I do: Use both!

XBMC can act as a front-end to MythTV. Recent builds have very good MythTV support. Just add a video source called myth://whatever and browse away. It doesn't support all of the MythTV frontend's advanced features, but basic browse/playback works fine.

I have a machine in the closet running the MythTV backend, and my XBMC in the living room for playback. I never have to touch the (IMHO) horrible MythTV GUI interface, except to configure the backend*

*Side note: The fact that you NEED the MythTV gui (running on X) to configure the backend is an awfully lame design decision on MythTV's part. Whatever happened to editing text files or a simple command-line based configurator?

Re:Pointless chrome

[denis-The-menace]

Linux might get more buy in if hardware vendors didn't have to commit to a full time employee rewriting drivers to suit the whims of some hobbyist on a caffeine and sugar bender.

Linux doesn't need to have ATI commit to a full time employee for writing drivers. Just the same level of access to the specs like the 5+ employees writing the windows drivers.