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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.
I just dumped Mythbuntu and switched to XBMC Media Center. I don't actually have a TV signal, just use the machine for DVDs and recorded movies, music and pictures across the LAN. And for those purposes, I found it so awkward to work with as to be unusable. Particularly the interface for managing your music collection.
This article seems to focus entirely on the aspects relating to managing TV signals and shows. Is there anything in this new interface that might make me want to switch back?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
There are other MythTV distros than Mythbuntu (Knoppmyth, Mythdora) that you might want to try if you find the Muthbuntu installer difficult. That said, Mythbuntu 8.04 was the first version of MythTV that I got my wireless card to work without fuss (Atheros based), and with that one point, made the install heaps easier than previous versions.
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).
It is a hacker's TIVO. I have tried it and had nothing but difficulty in getting things the way I wanted it. I spent hours...not to mention that ATI drivers in linux just suck.
I ended up with XP and SageTV. That product took a total of 20 minutes to install and configure (including my huge media library) and not hours to get nothing like mythtv.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
That's what came to mind when I looked at it. Most of what they were doing seemed like adding thumbnails and transition effects all over the UI. I usually turn off thumbnails in any UI I use because each one tends to require one or more disk seeks to retrieve, so scrolling lists becomes sluggish and clunky. As for transitions, IMO they just add delays.
What I'd rather see is making an alternative UI for those using a computer interface (or logging in from another machine) in addition to the current TV remote oriented UI. If all of the configuration could be done through an app similar to the KDE control center, that would make MythTV much easier to set up, manage and understand. The TV-oriented interface is just too constraining to effectively present many of the complex concepts in the configuration options.
(Of course, I really can't complain since I'm not pitching in to improve things myself. I'm just putting my feedback out there in case anyone finds it useful.)
I'm only worried about whether it's easy to install. When I was looking for making a PVR a couple years ago, I tried with Myth. I really did. I tried for days reading through the docs, trying to configure MySQL and set up databases. Trying to get my TV Tuner to work correctly. In the end, I downloaded a trial of SageTV and had everything up and running in 20 minutes. Haven't looked back since. Best $80 I ever spent. I use open source when possible, but not when it's that much more work than the alternative.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I used Mythbuntu to install my current setup. It was as easy as anything else has been in Windows. Boot from CD, answer some questions, let it copy files and reboot. Then tell it that it's OK to install the binary NVidia driver and that all worked fine. I did have to tweak the XOrg.conf a little, but I understand that the new release of XOrg doesn't even require the conf file now. And my changes were more to make the TV output a little more how I like it than anything else, it worked fine out of the box. Then I told Myth what my tuner device was (HDHomeRun) and it found it and did a channel scan. Then I gave it my login info to Schedules Direct and it was up and running. Probably about an hours work from CD boot to working Myth install.
Note that I did pick my hardware for Linux and Myth compatibility. I knew that's what I was going to be using the hardware for, so I chose accordingly. It's still a hacker's TiVo, but I hacked my TiVo boxes, and Myth was easier than that.
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.
Perhaps he's talking about mythtv-setup.
df -h
Let me correct that for you.
If I had a no-name brand capture card from some fly-by-night taiwanese company, this might make sense, but there is NO excuse for one of the two big players in the industry not supporting their hardware on Linux .
Myth shouldn't be struggling to support hardware. You think Microsoft have to reverse engineer and hack away at every card to make it work with their media center? The folks at ATI should be making sure something like a capture card works properly on linux with mythtv.
For anyone considering SageTV, it has it's own problems and gotchas. Having to pay for it would really piss me off.
About the remote control, that (like the installer) has nothing to do with the myth team. For remotes, you are looking for lirc support (the linux standard system for IR input). Once lirc supports it, myth will work with it just fine.
As for the video, I don't know about that particular card, but I know a lot of the All in Wonder cards have notoriously poor driver support under linux. If yours is one of those, I don't know how you expect a miracle when ATI would provide neither an adequate driver nor the necessary specs for an open source version to be created.
I made a mythbox for less than 200 dollars. The point is to buy compatible hardware from the start, don't blame the myth team though, it's hard to write drivers for devices that they get no support at all from the manufacturer. They do what they can and they do it well.
Like all things if you want the all the bells and whistles you have to get the best hardware. I have MythTV working on an old PIII box. I think I spent $200 and most of that was for the Hauppage TV card. Bear in mind, I can't play games and do a lot of the nifty features. But it served the basic purpose of a DVR on my 27" CRT. Now if I wanted digital and the best picture, I would have to drop some money. It still works but I've upgraded homes and now have a networked system. But the old one is in a closet and would be functional had I not used the HD in another machine.
So you're complaining that MythTV doesn't work well when you used cards (ATI) that do not have very good Linux support. When I built my DVR, I researched the type of card to use. By far, everyone said not to use ATi as there wasn't very much support. Not that some people couldn't get it to work, but that the support was lacking. There are other cards that you could have used. I would say rather it's a testament to Linux that it works at all.
To be fair, the problem is Linux doesn't have much support for your cards. The problem is not exclusive to MythTV.
For years now, Linux people have complained about ATI support. Until recently they have not helped the community much. If they had released a spec, an API, etc. Instead, all the work to date has been done by reverse engineering. nVidia has done a little more and in fact, nVidia has released binary drivers.
Now I don't mean to sound rude, but you're complaining that the free help with ATI you have gotten from the Linux community hasn't been enough. You're complaining that all the time and work these people have done for you without asking, without thanks, without compensation isn't adequate. Well, open source software has a solution for you. Learn C and write your own driver.
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MythTV is honestly a joke. (N.B. I've been running a mythtv box for 3 years)
For TV/PVR functionality, it's great. Want to watch a DVD or, gods forbid, a video file? Prepare for an exercise in pain.
Want to use some of the features it boasts (integrated emulators, image slideshow, etc...)? Suffer, worm!
Want to use an EXTREMELY COMMON remote(MCE)? Prepare to spend the better part of the evening manually remapping the buttons with vim. (I still have instances where I can't navigate DVD menus because of some weirdness on what is considered "up" and "down")
And if you DARE to want to record off of a non-tuned interface (RCA, e.g.) well, it will eat your face and lock you in the closet with a shoggoth.
But unfortunately, for TV, it is the best out there. :P
I am a long time XBMC user. I used it pre-fork when it was called XBMP (xbox media player). I am also a MythTV user.
I would love to see MythTV completely drop the entire frontend and have MythTV be only for backend recording. If you want that old crappy mythfrontend stuff around make it a separate project altogether and let users choose between mythfrontend or XBMC.
One thing I hate about myth's front end is the use of a DB for music or videos. Why can't you browse a NFS share, samba mount, or just a local directory live? You wanna build a DB so you can sort by artist, genre or whatever...fine. Do that, but let me just browse my files.
Seriously...drop the crap, write a good plugin for XBMC and be done with it.
Not trying to knock MythTV. It rocks as a recorder and has an awesome web interface...but thats about it. Playback is pretty lousy. XBMC is an awesome at everything it does.
I think you're confusing the stupidity that the "We're ATI, Of Course We Have Drivers, Which Version of Windows XP Do You Have?" crowd with the "We're Linux, Please Just Release Some Damn Specs So We Can Support The Hardware Already" crowd. There's a difference, you know.
Remember, that address again is Investor.Relations@amd.com.
You should look into the Live CD versions to test out if you want to proceed. Many people are happy enough with them. KnoppMyth, MythDora, Mythbuntu.
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No, Microsoft sits down for a bit and thinks about how they can best support a particular kind of hardware. They sometimes call up the relevant hardware manufacturers and say "hey, helps up define the API for this." After a few months they come away with an API that clearly defines what they hardware manufacturer is responsible for, what Microsoft is responsible for, what the basic functionality is. Then they stick to it. They don't change shit on a whim because "it's better this way." Thus the hardware vendors don't have to rewrite their drivers every few months just to provide the same functionality they had in the first place.
True, sometimes Microsoft fucks this process up and the standard just isn't right (wrong functionality, wrong prediction of what the future holds for a particular technology.) But quite often they're right, or at least right enough.
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.
Actually, the ATI HDTV Wonder is compatible with mythTV. In fact, the HDTV Wonder works better with MythTV than it does with Windows (since it natively supports QAM decoding, but is crippled in the windows drivers).
I will admit that it took me a long time to setup my HDTV Wonder, but that was primarily because I was impatient in the channel scanning process (and would cancel it before it found any channels).
The troll with karma.
Some people have gotten them to work but support for ATi on Linux is lacking. Before anyone complains about the huge cost of getting a new card, you can get a cheap nVidia (FX5 or higher) for as little as $30.
Don't wipe out your system just yet wondering if it will work. Use a live CD and see if it work at all. If it doesn't, you can eject the disc and reboot without any harm to your system. Currently, MythDora, Mythbuntu, and KnoppMyth are the top versions
For basic DVR functionality installing one the previous versions mentioned above is easy enough for most people. To get all the features, you might have to invest in some hardware. To get a networked system, you're going have to know more about Linux. For digital OTA HD TV, you need a digital OTA tuner and a video card with at least DVI out. If you are staying on analog cable and TV, you can get it running on very cheap hardware. Right now using a digital cable tuner is not fully supported as these boxes don't always have API documentation.
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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.
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"If I had a no-name brand capture card from some fly-by-night taiwanese company, this might make sense, but there is NO excuse for Linux not supporting hardware from one of the two big players in the industry."
There is plenty of excuse. The biggest players in the industry tend to be the ones that don't give a damn about Linux and hence refuse to provide documentation. ATI TV cards are notorious in this regard - The AMD purchase/merger seems to be helping in this regard, but ATI cards (not just TV cards but graphics in general) had a very long track record of poor Linux support due to lack of manufacturer cooperation.
Maybe you should've given your business to a vendor that actually cares about Linux and has even given sample hardware to select Linux driver/application developers for driver development and testing. Hauppauge is a good place to start - they don't officially support Linux but are VERY cooperative as far as giving driver developers documentation, support, and even in some cases early access to new hardware (such as with the HD-PVR 1212).
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
My problem isn't that the user tried MythTV and found it lacking. My problem is the user tried MythTV with hardware that was documented would not work very well and then blamed MythTV and Linux that they didn't work very well. For years, on many websites, it was quite clear that ATi would not work very well. Users were advised to use nVidia or even VIA for onboard video. Had the user done some basic research, he would have saved himself some headache.
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