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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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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