MythTV 0.22 Released

uyguremre writes "After a little over a year and a half in the making, the developers of MythTV announced that MythTV 0.22 is now available. There have been a lot of large changes since 0.21, including a port from Qt v3 to Qt v4 and a major UI rewrite to convert to MythTV's new MythUI user interface libary. As always, this release adds support for some new hardware, in this case VDPAU video acceleration, DVB-S2, and the Hauppauge HD-PVR. The MythUI toolkit allows themes much greater control over the user interface and today we're announcing a competition to design new themes for MythTV. With the new release comes a theming competition too. For a more complete list of changes and new features, read the Release Notes on the wiki."

Comments

upnp

[Anonymous Coward]

can we stream hulu over upnp yet?

Re:upnp

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for the threadjack, but how in the HELL do I set /. to show me all the posts in a thread? They keep changing the frigging code on the site and no matter how many places I go to and set a preference to see everything IT DOESN'T WORK!

Re:upnp

[Curtman]

how in the HELL do I set /. to show me all the posts in a thread? They keep changing the frigging code on the site and no matter how many places I go to and set a preference to see everything IT DOESN'T WORK!

I find about half of the time I can't get to any other page of the comments too. I see the first 50 comments, and when I click on the "2" to see the next 50, it says I'm on page 2, but I see the same comments.

Poor broken Slashdot...

mythtv website

[BeefMcHuge]

mythtv website got /.ed it would seem.

Re:mythtv website

[spandex_panda]

mythtv website got /.ed it would seem.

Bugger.

Re:mythtv website

[pelrun]

Why oh why is it so hard for people to stick .nyud.net onto urls so they get coral cached before submitting them to slashdot? You people are supposed to be smart!

Re:mythtv website

[shentino]

Cuz that makes the targeted sites miss out on ad revenue?

Re:mythtv website

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

mythtv website got /.ed it would seem.

So you're saying that the site is mything?

Re:mythtv website

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that denies us our malicious glee because we got everyone else to take down a website?

Re:mythtv website

[Wonko the Sane]

There's even a Firefox plugin that automatically adds the links for you.

Re:mythtv website

[OakDragon]

So you're saying that the site is mything?

Hey, I thpeak with a lithp, you inthenthitive clod!

Re:mythtv website

[oatworm]

No. That's a myth conception. The site is still there. It just won't respond due to our linking myth adventures.

Re:mythtv website

[pelrun]

I got modded troll? Really? It's not a stupid suggestion, thin skinned moderator dude.

Re:Not important

[Anonymous Coward]

uhhh...in case you haven't figured it out, that's kind of the roots of slashdot. But as a feminist, I certainly agree that they don't necessarily focus on the right issues, such as gender roles in computing, programming languages designed by women, breastfeeding keyboard layouts, etc.

Re:Too bad Linux is for faggots.

[ldj]

Balmer, quit kidding around. Don't you have work to do?

does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not trying to create flamebait, But honestly does anyone still use it. Everyone I know has ditched it (including the die hard fans that put me onto it in the first place) due to the hideous complexities in keeping the damn thing running and the endless complaints from "she who must be obeyed" because MythTV box has once again died in the arse during her favourite POS drama show. personally I use XBMC now.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given XBMC is not a DVR, and MythTV is, yes, those of us who don't steal our content still use MythTV.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[nick0909]

I have had it running via knoppmyth for a year, which I believe ran Myth .20 and just last week upgraded to Mythbuntu running a .22 pre-release version. It works great as a DVR, and the recent upgrades and changes have made it even better. I don't have many issues at all, and really enjoy the web frontend that lets me adjust my recordings, files, settings and schedules. A few friends have Windows media PCs and one is looking hard at switching over because their machine has gotten no innovation in the past two years while Myth has continued to improve.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[schon]

I still use it.

It's not without it's warts, but they're pretty easily hidden, and my wife and daughter both love it.

I've never used XBMC - how good it it's PVR capabilities? For scheduling does it support Schedules Direct, or some other listings service (or does it require screen-scraping of some sort?)

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if you and your buddies use an ad blocker ?

Re:does anyone still use it?

[0123456]

Not trying to create flamebait, But honestly does anyone still use it.

Yes. It's buggy and configuration is horrendous, but now it's going the only real problem I have is that it tends not to update the database properly when a table changes in a new version (e.g. mythbuntu seems to assume that you don't have a root password on the MySQL database).

That said, I'm not going to be upgrading to 0.22 until the current season of my girlfrend's favorite shows finishes, because I'll be in trouble if she misses some due to software changes.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[simplexion]

If she misses her show just download it.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given XBMC is not a DVR, and MythTV is, yes, those of us who don't steal our content still use MythTV.

If you going to be a retard and insult people. At least do your basic research first. heres some hints for you to google. hdhomerun TV Scheduler Pro.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Dalroth]

I ran MythTV for six years. The last year I've used SageTV. I got sick of MythTV locking up, crashing, and the constant non-stop twiddling with my configuration because I could never get things quite right.

SageTV isn't much better. I spend a lot less time twiddling, but it crashes and freezes about as often as MythTV used to. I'm still looking for that HTPC that just works. I haven't found it yet.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... running an external scheduling and recording application and watching it in XBMC makes XBMC a DVR? Wow, I guess that means mplayer, VLC, windows media player, ffplay, and everyone else are DVRs too! Wow, DVRs sure are a crowded field!

Re:does anyone still use it?

[pezmanlou]

XBMC won't record your tv shows, but it does act as a basic frontend. It can connect to a MythTV backend and stream live tv and recordings (without a plugin).

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

GP, you tried not to make flamebait, but it looks like you fried up a bath of it.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[BLKMGK]

I'd use it WITH XBMC once the Myth backend is a bit easier to configure. As it stands now I'm more than happy to DL my TV content - and yes I still have a damned cable sub with premiums and a TIVO attached to it. I just find that torrenting a show is easier and quicker. This is no more "theft" than running Myth with an ad removal program IMO.

Anyway, I understand the pain of setting up a Myth box having TRIED to do it myself. Maybe time to try again? Many folks I know are using Windows for much the same thing and it seems easier once you hurdle the DRM crap - they even remove commercials too. If Myth has gotten better terrific, I'll look again and figure out how to tie it to my XBMC system. Sadly I'll be stuck with OTA stuff but that's better than nothing. Overseas Myth is probably more popular because they can apparently hook it into SAT systems and get more content than we're stuck with here...

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Abcd1234]

I ran MythTV for six years. The last year I've used SageTV. I got sick of MythTV locking up, crashing, and the constant non-stop twiddling with my configuration because I could never get things quite right.

SageTV isn't much better. I spend a lot less time twiddling, but it crashes and freezes about as often as MythTV used to. I'm still looking for that HTPC that just works. I haven't found it yet.

You sure these aren't hardware-related problems? I've had a dual-tuner, split FE/BE Myth system running for, oh... two years now?... with absolutely no problems. Any crashes I've had occurred early on, and have been hardware related (ie, hard disks failing), or problems with Linux itself (XFS+LVM causing hardlocks, bugs in ivtv resulting in tuners dying, etc). 'course, it helps that once I had a working configuration, I didn't touch it at all (ie, no OS updates, etc).

As for fiddling... honestly, I have no idea what you're doing with your system that requires that kind of care and attention. Again, I've been running a Myth system for two years, and it's required basically zero care and feeding once I got the system up and running and working the way I wanted (granted, that took a bit of time early on, particularly on the frontend, getting third-party software working right, tweaking the remote configuration, etc).

Re:does anyone still use it?

[BLKMGK]

XBMC is a media front-end, it has NO recording capabilities nor will it apparently. Rather than reinventing the wheel the developers intend to make it easy to interface with other back-ends, including Myth. As front-ends go though it ROCKS and I am able to access all of my MP3, DVD\BD rips (MKV), and many streaming audio stations. I look forward to XBMC getting some MAME support (pretty please), and for there being some sort of back-end PVR thing for it to interface with...

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Abcd1234]

And as a consequence, it doesn't allow you to manipulate the recording schedule from your TV, resolve conflicts, view your guide data, find programs, or basically anything else that makes a DVR useful.

So as a basic FE, yes, XBMC could work. But it can't replace a proper Myth FE.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Windowser]

I got sick of MythTV locking up, crashing, and the constant non-stop twiddling with my configuration because I could never get things quite right.

SageTV isn't much better. I spend a lot less time twiddling, but it crashes and freezes about as often as MythTV used to. I'm still looking for that HTPC that just works. I haven't found it yet.

I have one MythTV backend in my server closet, plus 2 frontend in my house. I never fiddle with the settings, and the server keeps running and recording the shows we tell it to. It never seem to crash.

Since you have the same crashing with SageTV and MythTV, I would be tempted to say that the only point in common those 2 have is : YOU.
I would not let you touch my setup

Re:does anyone still use it?

[mtdean]

I'd use it WITH XBMC once the Myth backend is a bit easier to configure. As it stands now I'm more than happy to DL my TV content - and yes I still have a damned cable sub with premiums and a TIVO attached to it. I just find that torrenting a show is easier and quicker. This is no more "theft" than running Myth with an ad removal program IMO.

You do realize you're paying for cable TV /service/, right? You don't become rights holder to everything broadcast on cable TV just by having a cable TV subscription.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[gregmac]

I tried using XBMC on an Asrock ION 330 as a frontend for a while. Basically, it looks amazing (especially compared to Myth 0.21), and has some nice things like animations. It was dirt simple to get working with the hardware, including an MCE remote (as in, I basically had to do nothing).

The bad: it's not a DVR at all. It has half-baked myth backend support - in that it is supposed to understand the streams and be able to play content. However, you have to go into a menu item called "Scripts" and then start "Mythtv" from a list there, before navigating to recordings. It has no support for scheduling or doing anything besides playing back recordings. I ended up just making it look directly at the Recordings directory on my myth box and playing back files from there (note, I use a script there to symlink the mythtv recording files to their actual names).

The ugly: Due to the high potential, I started digging in more to see if there was anything I could do to help out, such as work on the myth backend support. What I found is that entire project has been mothballed, and they are working on a grandios rewrite of a generic PVR layer, and then later on top of that will have Mythtv support. Not a TERRIBLE plan, but 1) it's a huge plan, that will take a long time before it is even remotely usable, 2) it means the PVR has to be lowest common denominator support, combined based on what all the PVR backends they support have. It also means the devs are rejecting patches to the existing myth support, because it is not relevant in the wake of the new PVR backend.

On top of that, the architecture is sadly lacking. With apologize to XBMC devs, as I'm about to call your baby ugly, but It very much shows its organic and basic roots. The actual menu items are hardcoded into the theme, and intertwined with the code in the back. To do something that should be simple, like add another menu item to the main menu, from what I can tell you have to: 1) modify the core code to understand the command, 2) modify the theme to add in the button - which includes changing the x,y coordinates of all buttons below that one that now need to be shifted, and adjusting the animation code so it knows the positions of all the buttons. It's possible it is simpler than that (I didn't actually try), but from looking at the code, that's what it looked like to me, and so I lost interest due to the amount of effort and non-reusability (eg, my Mythtv button wouldn't be accepted as a patch, and I'd have to redo this anytime I installed an update).

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

no it doesn't, but running XBMC certainly doesn't make him a content thief like the guy responding to him implied.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[gregmac]

I'm going through the same. I've been using Myth for maybe 3 or 4 years (starting with 0.20-beta something). It was relatively stable, but did crash once in a while. Mostly what was driving me insane is for the past few months, it would stop responding to the remote for a few minutes, then suddenly play back everything that just happened. So you'd hit fast-forward, and nothing would happen.. hit a couple more times... then suddenly a few minutes later, it would skip forward several times. Lirc was seeing the commands in realtime, so I have no idea what the problem was. It was intermittent, and I never found a common thing that was happening at the same time.

I've built a new Windows box now, and I'm currently trying GBPVR, and SageTV. Myth's UI is better than SageTV's.. GBPVR is a lot like myth. Myth has better recording options than both. Sage has sub-$200 fanless network client hardware, which has the same UI as the main box - this is a HUGE plus. You can't build a PC for that price, let alone a silent PC, and any other options have a different UI which is just annoying. Myth is the only one I know of that supports multiple backends (not needed for me now, but it's a sign of a good design and allows expandability).

Taking away constraints of OS/software, there is just no solution that leads to a great networked PVR system out there yet, in my opinion. To clarify, I'm not looking for a HTPC - I want a UI, consistent on every TV in my house, that lets me watch live TV (not that I ever do that), watch and/or schedule recordings (and have any available on any TV), watch DVDs, watch downloaded movies/shows, listen to music (both stored and streaming), and things like pictures and weather reports are kinda handy too.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[nachomama]

My MythTV setup crashed a 2-3 times per week for several months. I eventually discovered that it was the Linux driver for my StreamZap LIRC receiver. I replaced it with a serial-based receiver, and haven't had a crash since.

What I'm saying, it's probably a hardware/driver problem, not a MythTV problem.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[pezmanlou]

True, it's not too fancy. However, XBMC is not meant to be a DVR. It just plays lots of video from lots of places. I just like having the ability to stay in XBMC and still be able to stream video from my mythtv backend.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

And as a consequence, it doesn't allow you to manipulate the recording schedule from your TV, resolve conflicts, view your guide data, find programs, or basically anything else that makes a DVR useful.

but then neither does MythTV as it is more often then not in a non functional state. XBMC plus whatever backend your using is still infinitely more stable and reliable than MythTV and I will take that combo any day over the constant moaning and complaining I had from the family when I was using Myth.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Max Littlemore]

I've been running it for ages without major problems. The only problem I have is every time I upgrade the kernel I need to rebuild the driver for my tuner, but that's no biggy - got that scripted - and it's nothing to do with MythTV per se.

Sure, it was a bitch to set up the first time, but since then it's been stable and awesome and having done it once, I'm pretty quick at setting it up for others.

I too use XBMC, but only as a quick and dirty way of using an Xbox as a frontend. It just doesn't come close as a PVR.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Implying it's a 1-to-1 replacement sure suggests it to be the case, though...

Re:does anyone still use it?

[fatmatt_oz]

yes, the community is pretty active from what I've seen. I've had mythtv running for 6 or 7 years and it's become a lot easier to set up. I think a lot of the noise about complaints from SWMBO you're talking about probably comes from mythtv being the entry into the linux world for a lot of people, people who are trying to learn a new OS as well as the intricacies of a fairly complex bit of software. The linux users I know who use it have really only had issues getting drivers/modules for dvb hardware that they thought was supported but after purchase find out the manufacturer has changed the chip types but not the model number! Most other issues they've had have been more general linux problems that manifested themselves in mythtv. When I first set up myth there was no equivalent available commercially with all the features myth has. Combined with the usefulness of having a home server (filestore, ssh tunnels when I'm traveling, web based recording setup and a bunch of other stuff) I still don't think that there's something commercially available or windows based that would be able to replace it for me.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not without it's warts, but they're pretty easily hidden, and my wife and daughter both love it.

Wait, what?

Re:does anyone still use it?

[rtb61]

Technically speaking as XMBC main forte seems to be media shifting which is allowed under fair use versus MythTV which records transmitted content (as well as media shifting) which typical is not allowed, then MythTV is more the tool of the, avast yeah 'lan'lubbers.

Being a bit 'slack' I am still curious as to where you can buy off the shelf HTPC linux based and either or both XMBC or MythTV running.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[tylernt]

I still use it, and it's reliable, but the 40 hours it took me to get this older version working has left me so scarred I don't dare do anything that might destabilize it (like upgrading). For me the upgrade path will be buying a whole new computer and capture device and spending another three weeks configuring the new version while I still have the old one working.

Have they fixed the behavior yet that you have to completely shut down your backend service in order to run the setup program to do a channel scan to find new channels? Because it sure would be nice to do that from your frontend without downtime. Especially when your backend is a headless box.

I know I shouldn't complain about free software, but my time isn't free and setting it up sure seemed to take a lot of it.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using MythTV binaries from the rpmfusion repo on top of Fedora, at three different family houses: one attached to a satellite TV set-top box via analog capture/mpeg encoder, one attached to an analog cable via a tuner card, and one attached to an antenna with an ATSC tuner card. I have been using the schedulesdirect programming data for two years with these setups. Each house has a simple single system configuration with back-end and front-end on the same computer.

I have even taken the systems through Fedora upgrades via yum upgrade, with only minor disruption (carrying forward all the MythTV database config content). I even did this on one of the systems which started out as ATrpms on top of Fedora and is now rpmfusion on Fedora. I've never compiled MythTV myself.

The only issues I have encountered were driver issues: The lirc driver for my MCE USB remote control failed to enable the IR-blaster to control the set-top box one time after a yum upgrade, which added a new (but broken) lirc driver in the Fedora kernel; The integrated Intel graphics controller on my latest system has been slowly getting better at HDTV playback as the drivers in Linux and X.org improve.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't understand how XBMC = Stealing content. I use XBMC exclusively as a frontend to view mythtv recordings, just find the GUI in mythtv cumbersome and slow.
Also mythtv is not very good on other media content, like music.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the hell did recording TV become not allowed? Or are you and your argument just full of shit?
And I am positive that all of the media being played on XMBC was purchased for that fair use media shifting right?

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not trying to create flamebait, But honestly does anyone still use it. Everyone I know has ditched it (including the die hard fans that put me onto it in the first place) due to the hideous complexities in keeping the damn thing running and the endless complaints from "she who must be obeyed" because MythTV box has once again died in the arse during her favourite POS drama show. personally I use XBMC now.

Must agree with this. The MythTVV devs need to take a good hard look at Windows Media Centre's configuration method.

I've been using computers for over 30 years, and linux for about 7, but when I tried to get MythTV to work with only ONE tuner card, the ridiculous backend configuration hoops one has to go through just left me aghast. Now, I'm sure for the devs they find it easy, but clearly the didn't run it by any end users out there.

They must fix the abomination that is the back-end configuration. Unless they're using a fiendish plan to have people not be able to complain about bugs, because they can't actually get the thing to operate in the first place.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[TheUni]

All fair points.

For one, you are correct about the Live TV support. One of the benefits of having such a large community is that we get a multitude of third-party plugins, scripts, skins, etc. That is also a problem in itself though, because they are often half-finished and poorly implemented. The MythTV frontend is such an example, though it has recently been picked up an greatly improved by our own dtierney.

The DVR rewrite is much more than that, it is an entire add-on framework that makes development more modular. It is being designed as a 'pvr-frontend' solution, one that you can hookup to one of many backends. There's no reason to rewrite what's already been done.

Your baby is ugly too! Really, though, the XBMC skinning engine is so powerful that simply diving in and changing a few things isn't exactly easy. That's also why we've drawn the interests of so many talented skinners and modders, the possibilities are endless. So it's a trade-off.

Currently Live TV certainly isn't what XBMC is known for, but it certainly excels as the face of your media library. We hope to improve that as time goes.

Sorry to hijack. Congratulations to the Myth devs on your release.

TheUni

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The very court case that led to the concept of fair use is about recording television content. Get your facts straight. Recording content in Myth is a direct relation to Sony v. Betamax which was, you got it, about time shifting, which is what a DVR/VCR are.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. XBMC supports playback from myth backends out of the box. No need for any scripts or the like.
2. It cannot, however, schedule recordings with myth out of the box. It also supports TvHeadEnd.
3. Support is in progress for recording. It'll likely be in in the New Year. While this is indeed a "grandiose" endeavour, the XBMC devs don't appear to do things half-arsed if a more general solution is available. This takes time.
4. As for adding "features" what do you expect? So much of XBMC can be altered without writing a single line of app code. Adding a button pointing at either running Myth itself, or executing the Myth box script, or pointing to your Myth recordings folder etc. etc. is usually just a couple of lines of skin code in most well designed skins. In some not-so-well designed skins, it may well require shuffling a few buttons around if they're not taking advantage of the control grouping and automatic navigation ability etc.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[wintermute000]

A friend of mine - who is a linux/java dev full time - runs a myth box. He has wasted far too much of his life (his words not mine) debugging the POS, spent all of last saturday trying to figure out a timing related issue whereby the audio and video goes out of sync on dvds, he reckons that the issue is totally random and not consistently reproducible e.g. patching a simple debug output affected the threading enough so that it fixed it on two of his test machines, but not on others. People working on the issue have reported varying degrees of the same bug. This issue is 6 months old. Yes, dvd playback is borked. Of course the simple solution would be to call mplayer instead but then he would have to manually reconfigure LIRC for mplayer, and so forth. The amount of bugs and issues he mentions to me on a monthly basis sounds nothing short of excruciating, esp. combined with linux graphics driver issues. And this is a guy who runs a custom compiled OS on his workstation (yes its not a distro, he compiles everything from source) and he struggles with myth.

I tried to get myth running on my old media center - I'm no dev or expert but I have been running fedora on my home 'server' since the Fedora Core 3 days, I test drive each new ubuntu and fedora release, I run a 'web appliance' w/ LAMP serving torrentflux-b4rt and ampache, squid, privoxy, ssh gateway so I am far from a newbie. After a wasted weekend - and yes all my hardware was allegedly compatible - I gave up, I didn't even get to the halfway mark so to speak.

Meanwhilst, Bill's dogshite of an OS grinds the HDD like crazy and sometimes wakes from sleep for no reason but god damn the media center bit just works and I never have to worry about it. Stick mediabrowser plugin on it for a jaw dropping, convince-nontechie-friends-they-NEED-a-mediacenter effect. I feel nauseated for advocating a wintel solution but in this case its just better than the alternatives (including appletv).

Re:does anyone still use it?

[wintermute000]

I'm still not getting all this PVR love. Esp as a lot of it comes from US posters, who have their lovely unlimited (or nearly unlimited) download caps.

Here is backward Oz, where most people live with 20-30 gigs a month, we download everything and nobody gives a rats --- about PVR.

Your paid off the house middle age types buy the officially sanctioned 'tivo' equivalent that is locked down by the provider. Everyone else downloads everything and / or gets it off the standard morning pass-the-usb-drive around ritual @ work.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[hairyfeet]

I don't know if XBMC is or not, but Mediaportal sure is, and Mediaportal + XP = about the easiest to use homebrew DVR I've ever tried. Like the above poster I tried MythTV and just couldn't keep it running for any length of time, and Mediaportal is easy peasy and so far pretty stable.

Oh it is Open Source too, if you care about playing with the code.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Hognoxious]

On older versions at least the installation is a nightmare. Based on a sample of me, it's harder to install than SAP.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Vitani]

Although I have not tried it (yet), there is a more complete third-party MythTV plugin for XBMC. You can find it at http://code.google.com/p/mythbox/ and it works for Linux, OS X & Windows

Features:

• Watch recordings with commercial skipping
• Watch Live TV
• Schedule recordings
• Fanart from tvdb.com, tmdb.com, imdb.com, and Google image seach.
• TV Guide
• Upcoming Recordings
• Supports MythTV 0.21 and 0.22
• Move commercial flagging jobs to the front of the queue

(Why are <li>'s double line spaced?)

Re:does anyone still use it?

[cowbutt]

I got sick of MythTV locking up, crashing, and the constant non-stop twiddling with my configuration because I could never get things quite right.

That doesn't chime with my experience of MythTV at all. It took about a day of solid fiddling to get core functionality working, and about a month of on-off work to get most of the other stuff working. It takes maybe half a day when I do a combined hard disc/distro/MythTV upgrade. The rest of the time, it JFWs. I run it on very modest hardware; a P4 2.53GHz (used to be a Celeron 1.7GHz), 768MB RAM and an nVidia 440MX video card. I use 3 physical DVB-T tuners which I multiplex to give 6 virtual tuners.

The only reliability issues I can report are a) /var filling up when I've borrowed space for non-MythTV tasks and forgotten to release it later (doh!) b) the frontend crashing sometimes when playing MP3s; I suspect marginally-corrupt files c) the backend having crashed inexplicably maybe once or twice in the three years I've been running it; quite possibly parsing data that's been broadcast as corrupt, or been corrupted by local RF noise.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[tburkhol]

I've been running a Myth system for two years, and it's required basically zero care and feeding once I got the system up and running and working the way I wanted (granted, that took a bit of time early on, particularly on the frontend, getting third-party software working right, tweaking the remote configuration, etc).

For me, the "getting the system up and running the way I wanted" took about eight months of tweaking, and that was without trying to use internal volume controls. Muddling around in menu paths like Utilities/Setup --> Setup --> Settings --> General. Convincing it to use the "internal" player in absolutely as few places as possible. I still dislike their transcoding system, so every new video means a remote access session, followed by a video manager session to get the metadata into SQL. Any movie with subtitles has to be manually forced to show the subs. The video manager has no hierarchy, so if you have more than a handful of videos, you have to use an external file manager to organize, and every file move means you have to re-download metadata.

Switching to 0.22 broke the sound (of course: it's linux, so anything you do has a 30% chance of breaking sound). Migrating to storage groups wiped all the metadata - which they warn you of and now provide a command line tool to help fetch metadata (my experience: about 20% automated). It also forces you to use the internal player, which has just about the worst interface of the common software video players.

Since all of that sounds like rant, let me say that I haven't any intention of switching from Myth. It does what I want. It works. I've invested hours in teaching it how to use my hardware. It occasionally crashes when launching into one of the plugins, and the 0.21 TV player periodically barfed (the 0.22 TV player has not done so yet), but not so much as to be a major hassle. I'm really happy the myth devs have worked so hard to make a functional package and give it away for free. I tolerate the UI quirks and occasional user-antagonism (like erasing all of my metadata) because they're part of the OSS deal.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Znork]

I don't know what you're doing to your myth installation, but mine has been pretty much zero maintenance between upgrades. The only glitches I've had for the last two years have been due to changes in digital broadcast MUX'es and the, eh, slight problems in the distributions audio subsystem.

Before that it was mostly issues with the TV cards and drivers, but I cant really blame Myth for that either. Going further back than that tho, (pre-0.20), yes, it was rather painful. I think I spent two months compiling (and recompiling in cases of circular dependencies) stuff back in the days before there were good repos for it.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use it all the time and the wife loves it. After finding stable hardware, it only needs a reboot once a year or so.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Dachannien]

records transmitted content (as well as media shifting) which typical is not allowed

It's times like this that I wish "Wrong" were one of the moderation options. Because you are. You've heard of TiVo, right?

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use it, I love it, it works rock solid for me. My only complaint is that my disk is almost full of my kids' videos. The MythTV box sits in my office, have an old Xbox running XBMC in the living room as a front end. I've been running it for 3 1/2 years now. Would not do without it! I run MythDora on older hardware with SDTV only. Never do any tweaking to the thing. Have had 1 database hiccup that was fixed via a post in the MythDora forums.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep! MythTV has been the only source of live TV (via DVB-T) in our home for about three years now. I've also tried other popular alternatives, but the backend is really solid and stable compared to anything else. The downside for me has really been the frontend. Any of the alternative frontends have not really worked properly with the backend. I'm really looking forward to installing this release.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[vlm]

Not trying to create flamebait ... due to the hideous complexities in keeping the damn thing running and the endless complaints from "she who must be obeyed" because MythTV box has once again died in the arse during her favourite POS drama show.

Not to create flamebait, but what are people doing that causes problems? Or what am I not doing, that I'm supposed to be doing, that has a side effect of ruining the system? I set up a terabyte-sized back end in the basement, back when a terabyte was several hundreds of dollars, and set up front ends on all my TVs and installed the front end software on all usable computers (like, 1GHz and faster CPU, etc), and it all "just works out of the box", hands off, no care needed, never the slightest problem. It actually requires less care and feeding than my cablemodem, which requires a reboot every couple months.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I've tested these two thoroughly. (talkin' bout months of daily use) I started with mythtv, and switched to mediaportal as i got tired of myths visually crippled UI. After a few months or so I'had to fall back to myth, because mediaportal simply kept crashing over and over again. Ever since I've been happy with myth, cause I dont ever have to quess wether my scheduled recordings have succeeded or not.

I'd like to stress the words "pretty stable"

Re:does anyone still use it?

[JackieBrown]

It's coming soon. It is even in one of their svn branches

If you use ubuntu you can test it out

https://launchpad.net/~henningpingel/+archive/xbmc

Re:does anyone still use it?

[ookaze]

I'm going through the same. I've been using Myth for maybe 3 or 4 years (starting with 0.20-beta something). It was relatively stable, but did crash once in a while.

MythTV has changed a lot since then. I've really started with version 0.21 (must have been 3 years ago at least) SVN, and the only crashes I experienced were with the frontend because of OS configuration problems (OpenGL, proprietary drivers, ...). The important part, the backend, never failed me once.

Mostly what was driving me insane is for the past few months, it would stop responding to the remote for a few minutes, then suddenly play back everything that just happened. So you'd hit fast-forward, and nothing would happen.. hit a couple more times... then suddenly a few minutes later, it would skip forward several times. Lirc was seeing the commands in realtime, so I have no idea what the problem was. It was intermittent, and I never found a common thing that was happening at the same time.

Yes, this bug has been fixed, among tons of other ones.

Taking away constraints of OS/software, there is just no solution that leads to a great networked PVR system out there yet, in my opinion. To clarify, I'm not looking for a HTPC - I want a UI, consistent on every TV in my house, that lets me watch live TV (not that I ever do that), watch and/or schedule recordings (and have any available on any TV), watch DVDs, watch downloaded movies/shows, listen to music (both stored and streaming), and things like pictures and weather reports are kinda handy too.

That's not true, there is MythTV. It has changed a lot since even 0.21, and these aren't just cosmetic changes. MythTV 0.22 is really a true milestone.
Don't let the state of MythTV 0.20 fool you and assume that it's still the same with MythTV 0.22, like a lot of people are doing in this discussion. You'll see lots of people talking about MythTV being buggy (meaning it has loads of bugs that makes it crash constantly) and very hard to use. These are basically myths now.
Of course MythTV still has hidden bugs, but from your description of your experience with it, I think you'll be pretty pleased. I've gone through the transition from MythTV 0.21, through SVN of 0.22, on my "production box", because the world was changing around MythTV (migration to DVB-T, HD and new sound codecs in Europe), it still works like a charm, and never failed me.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[smchris]

Every day. One thing that is a problem for some of us is XvMD and CBS. They seem to do something with their 1080 that screws up playback. Anybody know whether VDPAU fixes that?

That isn't a bug in MythTV per se. The program has it's bugs but it does most of what I want. I agree that the audio jukebox is mighty ergonomically ugly. Assumes you'll just call up a playlist? You can elect to have the music player continue while you do other stuff -- so why not allow the same option with streaming music? The custom web browser doesn't let me call up the foreign TV news station running Flash that I like to watch, so I have to drop out of the GUI for that. Hey, it is at version POINT22, right?

Some bugs are serious. I'm finding that Mythdora will practically do a flawless base install recognizing devices. But then you have to get stuff working, and in that area, I'm still advising people who don't know some linux and don't like tinkering with their computer to give it a pass. And I cringe at upgrading. Run a version until a new version intrigues me into a reinstall. It seemed like it took me a day the first time just to figure out everything I had to configure. Made camera screenshots of all the config pages and the next install took about 1-1/2 hours to get TV up, half for install/half for config.

The bottom line is that MythTV honestly is a hobby project, but it fits my viewing niche.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[bkr1_2k]

Since when is it "not allowed" that I record media I paid for so I can watch/listen/use it at my own convenience? As far as I know, there is nothing wrong with recording the content as long as I'm not trying to rebroadcast it for a profit (or for public consumption even without profit.) This has been the case since the late '70s.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[wolrahnaes]

While there is a legal distinction, is there really a moral distinction between recording the show on your own DVR versus downloading a copy someone else recorded?

My TiVo HD records Mythbusters every week, but around 6 hours later my media server goes out to the internet and grabs a copy of the same episode. I could just script a few tools like kmttg does to rip the content off the TiVo and transcode to a format of my preference, but why bother when someone else has already done it for me and at the same time cut the commercials for me?

Yes, technically what I'm doing is illegal, but morally I can not see any way this is any different than if I was to waste my time scripting and waste my CPU time processing my own recordings in to the same end result.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Dalroth]

I've had many iterations of hardware over the last 7 years. Trust me, it's not the hardware. I've spent more money on hardware for this thing than I ever should have.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish I could.

I'm still looking for a small, lightweight linux distribution that can boot from compact flash and supports nothing more than cable and on-air TV viewing with a configurable IR remote control. Actually, with a DTV converter box, the remote control is already built-in. I've got 4 old machines that could be used as TV's, and I'm still searching. Maybe it's time to rebuild a copy of Puppy Linux with TVtime.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[King_TJ]

I ran knoppmyth for well over a year myself, and honestly, wouldn't have switched from it except for 2 things.

1. My Myth box started having some hardware problems. (It was an Antec Minuet case, similar to their Sonata. Piano black and looked kind of like a stereo component. The blue circular light around the chrome power button started going out - so it would just randomly flicker. Real annoying, and couldn't ever find a replacement part for just that button assembly.) Not only that, but I was still using an old GeForce 4Ti4600 board with it, and it started getting really picky about being seated properly in the slot. I'd constantly find a black screen/no video, and have to power it down, push down hard in the right place to get the card firmly in the slot, and then it'd work again on a reboot (at least for several weeks or so).

2. I got AT&T U-Verse. Knoppmyth had no native support for remote control of their proprietary boxes. Supposedly "good" lirc configs were posted for it, but at best, I had mixed results. I had it changing channels ok on the box, but had issues with the U-Verse box going to a "screen saver" after so many hours of inactivity. Once they went into that state, knoppmyth wasn't properly waking them back up when it needed one to go to a certain channel to start a recording.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[schon]

XBMC is a media front-end, it has NO recording capabilities nor will it apparently.

So how is it a replacement for MythTV then?

Rather than reinventing the wheel the developers intend to make it easy to interface with other back-ends, including Myth.

So.. instead of dealing with "hideous complexities in keeping the damn thing running", the solution is to deal with "hideous complexities in keeping the damn thing running"?

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Civil_Disobedient]

steal

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[JWW]

I've never used XvMD, but I can say that I've used VDPAU to play back 1080p with great results. I haven't tried any of the 0.21 VDPAU enabled myth builds yet (I use mplayer as the video player), but VDPAU is working great. I assume the myth native player utilizing it will be fine. It takes an incredible load off the processor when playing hd content.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Abcd1234]

Well, it's *something*. I'm a fairly heavy user of Myth (usually around a dozen recordings a day spready across both tuners, though granted it's all SD), and I *never* see the core parts of Myth crash. In my experience, the only questionable bit is MythMusic (and, let's face it, it's kinda craptacular, so that's hardly surprising).

It'd be interesting to investigate what kinds of instability you were seeing. Perhaps it's some weird combination of hardware or something... I'm using stock Hauppauge cards, which are extremely well supported by v4l and Myth, but I chose them specifically for that reason. Or it could be the distro fscking up, rolling out buggy versions of Qt, the linux kernel, or other pieces Myth depends on.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[BLKMGK]

Hey, I'm the messenger here not the message - calling it like I see it.

XBMC isn't a replacement for Myth if what you want is a DVR - I didn't claim that it was. XBMC works fine with say an HDHR for viewing of live content but I do not think it can pause rewind etc. of said content. I've not tried doing this integration so I might be off on that. As for integrating with Myth, that is work in progress and obviously relies on Myth getting it's act together - hopefully that's occurring. Myth isn't intended to be the only backend that integration can occur with either so if something else comes along then game on.

Basically, the XBMC guys have their hands full trying to build a damned nice front-end that runs on multiple platforms. They have decided to avoid the minefield that is DVR functionality by not reinventing the wheel which I think is smart considering the quagmire that Myth has been in the past.

As for solutions - I find Bitorrent to be MOST handy when it comes to getting my favorite TV shows. I'll try out the new Myth as soon as I'm able but frankly unless it's a major improvement in setup over previous revisions I won't be changing my habits much if at all.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[sorak]

No innovation? My experience with Windows Media Center is that it has gotten to be useless, because it respects the copyright flag. It used to be that this meant that you cannot record HBO, but now, the big four are using it. Of course, my Media Center PC stopped working six months ago, and I was so dissatisfied, that I just replaced it with standard XP. So, in the past six months, it is possible that they have fixed the "we won't record anything but PBS" policy of theirs.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[BLKMGK]

Ding ding!!! Winnah!

Exactly the way I feel. I have also discovered shows in other countries that I would NEVER have been able to watch on this side of the world were it not for being able to get them this way. My TIVO is fat as a tick with content but frankly I am perfectly happy not having to go through hoops to pull it.

That said, thanks for the tip on http://code.google.com/p/kmttg/ :-) I have been out of the TIVO hacking realm for awhile since I moved to an HD TIVO and this looks like a VERY interesting new project. While I'm certainly happy to grab stuff off the WEB via Torrent this looks like it might also be interesting. I'm only just now playing around with RSS feeding my Torrent client, might as well learn about this stuff too!

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Abcd1234]

My TiVo HD records Mythbusters every week, but around 6 hours later my media server goes out to the internet and grabs a copy of the same episode. I could just script a few tools like kmttg does to rip the content off the TiVo and transcode to a format of my preference, but why bother when someone else has already done it for me and at the same time cut the commercials for me?

Yeah, or, you could run a system like Myth which lets you do what you want with the content.

Let's face it, the justification for your actions is rooted in the fact that your TiVo doesn't let you do what you want. The beauty of a system like Myth is that that problem goes away. Want to automatically transcode any content you record to a different format? Just set up mythtranscode, and voila, you're off to the races.

Incidentally, I happen to agree with you that what you're doing is certainly moral. But, TBH, I actually find my Myth system to be a better solution than downloading. It's something my wife can use, I get access to programming that I'd never be able to find online (good luck finding random, individual, well-seeded episodes of M*A*S*H or Star Trek), I get a full guide that I can use to search for programs, configure recording rules, etc... it's just way less hassle than having to maintain an RSS -> torrent downloader.

All that said, I continue to stick with SD, and the fact that many networks are now *clipping* widescreen HD content for broadcast as SD may force me to move some of my recording over to downloads... there's nothing worse than watching a scene involving two people where both of the faces are clipped. Fucking idiots...

Re:does anyone still use it?

[hairyfeet]

Uuuhhh...did you actually try checking your logs, to see what was you know, actually causing the crash? Because depending on which plugins you were trying to run it will require certain Windows services to be running, which is why they advise against those "stripped down" XP builds that many try to use Mediaportal with hoping to be able to cheap out on the hardware.

Like many complex pieces of software I've found Mediaportal requires you to actually RTFM a little if you are gonna be using more than just the stock options and not just "throw it on there". I've found with a stock XP Pro with the stock plugins it is solid as a rock, but like Firefox if you use some of the more out there homebrew plugins with it you are looking at the possibility of memory leaks. That is just a risk one takes when one is working with FOSS-sometimes the writer of a plugin isn't as good as they think.

If MythTV falls down on you (which I found was far too often in my case) give it another go and look at the logs if it crashes. Five will get you ten that you were either using one of the more esoteric plugins that simply didn't play nice with your hardware/software combo, or that you had disabled a Windows service vital to its operation. Simply using a more tested plugin or re-enabling the required services would have most likely solved your problem and you too would have a rock solid easy to use DVR like I have, although after switching my main rig to Windows 7 I might just give my Mediaportal machine to my family and run WMC, which is actually pretty damned nice in Win7 HP.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

My only problem with windows media center is that nobody sells just an IR blaster for it and even if they did, multiple IR blasters aren't supported. Otherwise, it has integrated Netflix streaming, some internet tv, and no-extra-subscription-fee TV schedules. Might not be innovation, but it just works. I can launch boxee or xbmc from a menu item easily, so I don't lose any of that, and boxee gets Adobe Flash that is far less buggy than the linux version was for me. Plus, if I decide to ditch it, I have more other options on Windows (Sage, BeyondTV, GB-PVR) than Linux (Freevo or Myth).

It's not that I'm not looking forward to trying this MythTV release. I am. Just don't think that Windows will never catch up since it already has.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Downloading no, but since most people are using fileSHARING apps they are also uploading.

That's where the distinction lies...

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Andy Dodd]

The only times I've had Myth crash in the past year have been due to malformed recordings.

This is a problem in my area with the local network affiliate with basically every DVR solution out there that attempts to record Time Warner's re-feed of WBNG. It seems to be a longstanding artifact of the year-long lawyer fight the two had that prevented TWC customers from getting WBNG feeds for ages, and also of the fact that WBNG is supposedly bankrupt.

That said, unlike many other solutions, Myth has a "lossless transcode" capability that remuxes broken streams, and fixes 90% of WBNG recordings.

My biggest "fiddling" problems with MythTV have been a result of the fact that I was a Gentoo user for years. Upgrading Myth usually meant upgrading the Gentoo boxes... I started using Ubuntu on my netbook last year, then put it on my new laptop, and soon swore any new system would not be Gentoo. Last weekend I decided that even my existing Gentoo installations merited a nuke and repave. Main desktop is upgraded, backend in 1-2 weekends (gotta do it when no recordings are scheduled), HTPC once the backend is done.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Andy Dodd]

What tuner? Most have been integrated into the kernel at this point.

I know working with my PVR-500 became SO much easier once ivtv mainlined...

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Andy Dodd]

Use Myth's "lossless transcode" function.

I thought it was just my local CBS affiliate and their cable "re-feed" to TWC, but your comment makes me thing that it may be CBS in general.

The problem isn't with the video itself, the transport stream muxing is b0rked. "lossless transcode" remuxes the stream and fixes 95% of recordings.

Those that don't get fixed will have out-of-sync audio. :(

Re:does anyone still use it?

[schon]

Hey, I'm the messenger here not the message - calling it like I see it.

XBMC isn't a replacement for Myth if what you want is a DVR - I didn't claim that it was.

OK - the post I replied to says that XBMC is a replacement for MythTV - full stop. As MythTV is primarily a PVR (the ability to view DVDs/imported movies are plugins, not part of the core program) I interpreted that to mean that XBMC was a PVR. Because if it wasn't it's not a replacement.

I'm not married to MythTV, and if there was a better solution, I'd use it - which is why I asked about XBMC's recording abilities in the first place.. someone suggested it as a replacement, and I wanted to get some first-hand information from someone who uses it.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[jedidiah]

This would be my main reason for still using MythTV despite the fact that Tivo
has the appearance of having more or less caught up to the various PVR softwares.
HOWEVER, the fact that Tivo honors that flag means that things that would be
considered "basic" features in MythTV terms will be disabled in Tivo. I could see
the same problems cropping up in MCE.

Multi-room viewing "except the good stuff"? How lame...

Re:does anyone still use it?

[jedidiah]

Nonsense.

I use MythTV in this capacity quite often.

OTOH, the idea of doing this on your 60" living room TV is a little absurd anyways. The whole point of something like MythTV is that you can use the same interface on your desktop PC and not tie up the display that everyone wants to use for actual TV watching.

MythTV is a bit buggy in that regard but it's easy enough to manage.

MythBuntu should integrate that sort of stuff for those that can't be bothered.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[wagnerrp]

Sony v. Betamax

Wait, Sony sued itself to get its own product banned?

Re:does anyone still use it?

[wagnerrp]

steal

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The OP claimed MythTV crashed on too many TV recordings, so they just switched to XBMC. Since XBMC does not have any recording capacity, the OP was either waiting for it to come out on DVD, or was simply getting the TV content from the internet. For nearly all TV content, the only avenues to do so are using a flash player in a browser, or illegally pirating the shows.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[BLKMGK]

Well, I think what was actually posted was something along the lines of "does anyone still use it - I use XBMC". I agree that the statement was misleading and I tried to clarify. I myself use XBMC over any PVR software. How? I torrent much of my content. I almost never watch anything live, I suspect you're much the same. I have a TIVO HD that acts pretty much the way I'd like Myth to act - as an appliance. So far my solution isn't perfect but it's working. Seldom can I not find what I'm looking for but often that's because I want mainstream stuff. I'm not going to find say a football game or auto race as a torrent. My TIVO can handle that but I use it less and less, I may be looking into a solution to pull content from it actually and make it available to XBMC. I will also check into the new Myth stuff but honestly I'll be shocked if it works so much better that I give up other paths.

Anyway, sorry but if a DVR is what you must have then XBMC isn't a better solution. If what you want is a media front end for pictures, ripped movies, torrented content, and music then yeah XBMC is pretty awesome IMO.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[ncc74656]

Recording content in Myth is a direct relation to Sony v. Betamax

In more recent years at Sony, the left hand might not know what the right hand is doing, but I don't think they had this problem back in the '80s. You meant Sony v. Universal, which is colloquially known as the "Betamax case" or "Betamax decision."

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Civil_Disobedient]

Illegally pirate, perhaps (though most TV shows are available on DVD). But steal? No. Might as well say pirates are committing rape against the entertainment industry. It's an inappropriate word used to garner support from the ignorant.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[cayenne8]

"As for solutions - I find Bitorrent to be MOST handy when it comes to getting my favorite TV shows. "

I guess I'm a little confused on how I could find your suggestion something I could use in my every day life (work, gym, living...etc).

While you can get shows off BT or even USENET...I just don't have the time to search for stuff to watch every day and start it downloading, go to work, and hope it is there (and then have to unrar/par2 it, etc). I prefer to set my Myth box to search for subjects I like , or set it to record shows I want to see...and let IT do the footwork of recording my content.

That and are you a little concerned these days about the *IAA coming to get you for getting TV shows off BT?

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the following sense of "steal" has existed for a very long time:

Dictionary.com says: one sense of "steal" is to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.

Merriam-Webster includes this text after listing related terms (pilfer, filch, purloin, etc): . steal may apply to any surreptitious taking of something and differs from the other terms by commonly applying to intangibles as well as material things.

An oft-quoted mantra of the habitual copyright infringers is that "steal" somehow involves depriving the original owner of the ability to use the item. However, the word steal is not exclusive to physical items. Even so, Copyright infringment is depriving some entity of a right: the government-granted right of exclusive distribution. Once you have a copy and are giving it away, you have taken the right of exclusivity from the party who legally has the right.

People who are opposed to the use of the word "steal" in this sense of the are simply uncomfortable with being likened to criminals who steal tangible items.

I am not saying I agree with all of the copyright law as it is. But, it is what it is and when you illegally take away someone's legal rights, you are stealing.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Phoobarnvaz]

I ran MythTV for six years. The last year I've used SageTV. I got sick of MythTV locking up, crashing, and the constant non-stop twiddling with my configuration because I could never get things quite right.

Have attempted to run MythTV...along with other "Myth----" varieties. No matter what version I've installed & attempted to run...with webpages & books to help with setting up/configuring the software...could never get MythTV to record anything at all.

Being a former computer tech/advanced user having experience with Linux since the 1990's...the biggest reason MythTV is not overtaking anything on Windows is due to the fact that I can install & configure ANY Windows PVR program in less than 30 minutes. At the end of that 30 minutes...am recording programs with no glitches or problems. Can MythTV do this now or even in the future? The answer is no. When I can install numerous versions of Linux...Windows...DOS...BSD or even QNX and using almost all of the applications as soon as the desktop comes up...why should MythTV be any different? It doesn't need to be.

As soon as MythTV becomes as easy to use as GBPVR under Windows 2000/XP...I will run it. The designers don't/will not understand this. If I want to use my computer for a moon landing with all the issues that come with it...I'll work for NASA. I and others just want to record our shows without constant worry that the software will even work.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then, sounds like MythBox might come in handy for you. Check it out @ http://mythbox.googlecode.com. It has pretty much everything except for search (which is currently being worked on) :-)

Re:does anyone still use it?

[level_headed_midwest]

I would have to agree that all of the problems I've had with MythTV have been hardware-related once I got the thing set up and configured properly. I run MythTV 0.21 on Debian stable and it has been flawless. The only problems I've encountered are the crappy digital cable box I have to use to decrypt the channels needs to be powered on and off roughly every other month and the occasional pulled-from-a-dumpster-dive-machine PSU dying.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[charlesnw]

What hardware tuners are you using?

On Ubuntu with the Hauppage cards, I do apt-get install mythtv , run mythtv-setup, put in my schedules direct info, setup the input mapping and I'm done.

The front end is the somewhat time consuming part, my wife has a series of tweaks she does to her liking. It's really quite easy though.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I've been running myth for 4? years now (since ~.08). My present system has 4 tuners. Granted, 2 of them are in a HDHomerun so they are not physically in the computer, but I often have 4 shows recording while I am watching another (it is both the frontend and backend). It is regularly up for months at a time.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, technically what I'm doing is illegal, but morally I can not see any way this is any different

It's different because when you do that, the kopyright kops get your IP address, get confused about what they're doing, and then sue your next door neighbor for $70000. You neighbor ends up settling and paying $5000 just to make the kopyright kops go away, and it's all your fault.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[BLKMGK]

The tracker site I'm using has shows within about an hour or two of showing although it's often a day or three before I'm downloading it - I have a life too ;-) Download speeds are pretty fast, measured in minutes - I generally grab SD video but it's downsampled from HD and as a result looks damned good.

The files don't have to go through any sort of joining process requiring PAR and aren't compressed - there's no point in compression for single files with a compressed format. If I can get the RSS feeds working properly the shows could even be queued up without my having to do anything - we'll see how that goes as that will be a slow process. Right now an hour show in SD is about 350megs, 720P HD is 1.1Gigs and honestly the "SD" looks great.

As for the MPAA no for TV shows I'm not terribly concerned. I do have a TIVO but honestly this ends up being as easy although I may look into automating some things with that as well (kmttg). I will point out that I do NOT download movies nor pirate piles of software etc. I also throttle my connection to fairly pedestrian speeds for uploads so as not to stomp on neighbors and only open it up slightly in the evenings off-peak. I don't go crazy with this stuff but I do find it convenient. IF the studios made it this convenient, like music has finally become with Amazon, I'd be willing to consider buying it and dropping my video cable sub

Re:does anyone still use it?

[cayenne8]

"If I can get the RSS feeds working properly the shows could even be queued up without my having to do anything ..."

Can you explain this? I thought RSS was just a web/news reader protocol...what would it have to do with downloading tv shows?

Re:does anyone still use it?

[VoltageX]

Comments like this are frustrating, I can see there's obviously an issue with the way MythTV worked for you, but no details to try and fix the issue.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[DimmO]

your favourite torrent site will have (possibly several) RSS feeds which list the newest torrents, and their download links. Add this rss feed to your favourite torrent program and tell it to filter out the torrents you want. your favourite torrent program will load the RSS feed regularly, and then download your filtered torrents all by itself.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[ichthus]

The better torrent sites have RSS feeds of their various categories (TV XviD, TV HD, DVD-R, etc.) The feed is simply a list of named links to the .torrent files in each category. You can set your BitTorrent client (I like to use ktorrent with the Syndication plugin) to search for strings within the link names and download based on a set of filters. You can use regex filters, or just standard wildcard format (eg. "*ig*ang*eory") and even set the season and episodes.

Sure beats the old timer on the VCR routine.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[BLKMGK]

Those guys beat me to it but what they said is correct. The tracker I use has RSS feeds for various categories. What I find interesting is that when I use VUZE to add torrents it says there are RSS feeds that FireFox doesn't see! I think Vuze does some interesting things to create these streams but I'm not sure. Frankly I'm not overly fond of Vuze. I have also used Transmission which I believe also supports RSS but sadly that one's WEB interface left much to be desired - not that Vuze worked better.

I organize my files so a WEB interface needs to allow me to add torrents and then SPECIFY where to put the files not dump them all in one folder. uTorrent's RSS stuff actually seems to allow this natively but it's WEB interface I've also had issues with.

What I'd like is to run something slim but user friendly on Linux so I can use my ION box and little power to pull torrents behind XBMC. It makes no sense to run uTorrent on an overclocked I7 just to run torrents and even my C2D is massive overkill. the I7 was a 10X speedup compressing BluRay however :-D

Anyway, yes RSS can be used to automate the feeding of a torrent client in order to have more automated downloads. Neat huh?

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Max Littlemore]

DVICO dual fusion PCI (from memory, not at the machine right now). I don't think it is in the kernel and I personally wouldn't have bought it. My dad was at the shop getting it for my birthday, he rang me up and asked about brands/models and then bought the only one where I said "Don't get that!". He got it because for only a couple of dollars more than a supported haupage DVB card, he got (being phased out at the time and completely redundant) analogue included. He's getting old, bless him.

I'm still running an older kernel on that machine because it's my super stable, not allowed anywhere near bleeding edge workhorse. I won't find out if it's in the kernel now until next year, most likely.

Just in case this post shows up on google for someone looking for linux DVICO dual fusion PCI, go here. This Christopher Pascoe guy does good things, although I do have to massage the build, removing drivers that fail from the build config works for me. I wish I was at the machine, I could be more specific.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[wolrahnaes]

I'd love to use Myth, but as an American television consumer who loves his HDTV, I really can't. Show me a way I can get the HDTV feeds of Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic, or any of the dedicated HDTV networks like HDNet or HD Theater on a Myth box without converting through analog first and I'll jump on it of course, but as far as I am aware this is not an option for those of us in the land of CableCard and DSS, rather than wonderful standard DVB.

I know it's possible to use smartcard emulators with DVB-S2 tuners to semi-reliably pick up Dish Network, but it looked like too much of a pain in the ass when I was a Dish subscriber and now would be both immoral (as I don't have a legit sub) and also impossible due to not having a good place to mount a dish in my current apartment.

A few years ago I built a few HTPCs, both Myth and Windows MCE, off old PC hardware with Hauppauge cards and as soon as that upcoming quad-tuner CableCARD tuner for Windows MCE hits the market my TiVo will be retired in favor of the Windows 7 MCE box sitting next to my AV rack. At this point, however, my combination of TiVo for near-realtime time shifting and PC+Internet for longer archival seems to be the best option available for my HDTV fix.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Abcd1234]

I'd love to use Myth, but as an American television consumer who loves his HDTV, I really can't. Show me a way I can get the HDTV feeds of Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic, or any of the dedicated HDTV networks like HDNet or HD Theater on a Myth box without converting through analog first and I'll jump on it of course

Why the artificial "no analog" limitation? You can get cheap (ie, $250 list) 1080i component capture that looks perfectly fine.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the plus side, people on the IRC channel are much more competent than random SAP consultants and they charge less.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Civil_Disobedient]

Even so, Copyright infringment is depriving some entity of a right: the government-granted right of exclusive distribution.

The appropriateness of the word hinges precisely upon this point. Unfortunately, people who pirate data are not intrinsically distributing data. Thus they are not necessarily thieves in your bastardized usage.

Re:does anyone still use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to MythTV 3 months ago after giving up on MediaPortal after a month of frustration. In fairness, the problem was more down to XP than MP, but XP just wasn't stable enough to be left running as a PVR (plus the drivers for my TV card/IR for remote kept crashing out). So after a month of fighting with crashes/instability/frontend locking up, switched to Mythbuntu which installed in less than an hour (as opposed to the day and a half it took to install XP + all software + 40million odd patches all of which seemed to require a reboot) and has been running sweet as a nut ever since. Rock solid, records about 6 shows a day (wife and kids use it too - I'm not that much of a telly addict), and has also replaced a very old DVD player plus acts as a media centre. The wife says she can't work out how we managed without it.

Re:Not important

[Anonymous Coward]

err.. How do you breastfeed a keyboard layout?

after two YEARS trying to get MythTV working...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been able to chase many bugs/complexities/installation issues down, but I simply can't get it working. Right now I'm battling some time-out/buffering error on the HD capture stream watching live tv over pci-e on an HDR-1250. I really want it to work. I'd love to load all my kids movies up on it and turn it loose on the home theater. But the dang thing *just* *doesn't* *work*.

Re:after two YEARS trying to get MythTV working...

[BLKMGK]

Rip the kid's DVD to a NAS in ISO format, something like unRAID will work fine or whatever SMB thing you're willing to roll. Hell NFS might work too. Anyway, get the kid's stuff onto spinning storage. The load up XBMC on something small and cheap like an ASROCK ION 330 - run Ubuntu with VDPAU. Slap an MCE remote on it, plug it into the TV and stereo, be happy. I have done this and can access ALL of my DVDs. Instead of having racks lining my hallway the DVD are now in boxes and no one is the wiser as to the extensive collection. I can pull up any of hundreds of DVD just fine. My BD have been ripped and converted to MKV files, takes less than 2 hours a movie on my I7, longer on slower boxes but worth it.

XBMC may not be a DVR but if you have many disks around and you worry about theft or damage it's a godsend. I just wish the Linux version played games like the old XBOX version did :-D

Re:after two YEARS trying to get MythTV working...

[Blakey Rat]

Rip the kid's DVD to a NAS in ISO format, something like unRAID will work fine or whatever SMB thing you're willing to roll. Hell NFS might work too. Anyway, get the kid's stuff onto spinning storage. The load up XBMC on something small and cheap like an ASROCK ION 330 - run Ubuntu with VDPAU. Slap an MCE remote on it, plug it into the TV and stereo, be happy. I have done this and can access ALL of my DVDs. Instead of having racks lining my hallway the DVD are now in boxes and no one is the wiser as to the extensive collection. I can pull up any of hundreds of DVD just fine. My BD have been ripped and converted to MKV files, takes less than 2 hours a movie on my I7, longer on slower boxes but worth it.

WHAT THE HOLY FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!

Is there any viable (non-console) alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

MythTV seems stagnated in development, even with this release, and seems bulky and awkward. Are there any other viable alternatives for home TV boxes/media boxes, that *don't* include a console in any way (xbox media centre, PS3, Wii, etc...)

Re:Is there any viable (non-console) alternative?

[jrumney]

Freevo is similarly stagnated, they've been working towards 2.0 for years. VDR handles the backend, but is lacking a nice 10-ft frontend. Moovida looks promising but is currently lacking a TV recording backend (combined with VDR, it may be the ideal solution).

I'm currently using Freevo, but starting to become frustrated at the broken plugins and limitations in its input (can't assign events to Ctrl key sequences which are generated by some of the Windows Media Centre oriented media keys on my wireless keyboard). The fact that MythTV requires MySQL and Qt and apparently is even more difficult to set up than Freevo (hard to believe) has kept me from considering a switch to MythTV seriously, though it does seem to have more of a following than any of the other contenders.

Re:Is there any viable (non-console) alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

XBMC Media center (it is no longer xbox media center) is able to run on Linux, mac, windows, apple tv (mac variant.. right?) .. and changes are mostly being still pushed to the xbox version, but I think most of the devs target regular x86 pc .. with the largest portion targeting ubuntu.

Re:Is there any viable (non-console) alternative?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

MythTV seems stagnated in development, even with this release, and seems bulky and awkward. Are there any other viable alternatives for home TV boxes/media boxes, that *don't* include a console in any way (xbox media centre, PS3, Wii, etc...)

I'm pretty happy with myth, but you are right, forward progress has slowed. To the point of ridiculousness.

For example, the devs recently refused to accept patches for the support of R5000-modified tuners - tuners which are perfectly legal under the DMCA because they only modify the tuners that do not include access control (if the box has access control, typically 4C on firewire, the company will refuse to make the modification because of the DMCA.)

The reason the devs refused to accept the patches?
Assumption of violation of ToS and DMCA - when neither is the case.

Re:Is there any viable (non-console) alternative?

[Andy Dodd]

Isaac Richards, the lead MythTV developer, lives in the united United States of America, where people can (and will) sue anybody for anything.

Are you a lawyer? If you aren't, shut up. If you are, offer to defend Isaac and the other US-based Myth devs for free when they get sued. Let's face it, even if they have a legal leg to stand on and would win in court, getting sued is an expensive proposition. Some lawsuits are (unfortunately) won by default because the defendant doesn't have the money to fight it out.

Re:Is there any viable (non-console) alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still prefer Freevo.

I seems more modular than mythtv, and less prone to crash (possibly because it is written in Python, so no bad pointer issues).

I do wish it had more of a developer following.

Re:Is there any viable (non-console) alternative?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Are you a lawyer? If you aren't, shut up. If you are, offer to defend Isaac and the other US-based Myth devs for free when they get sued. Let's face it, even if they have a legal leg to stand on and would win in court, getting sued is an expensive proposition. Some lawsuits are (unfortunately) won by default because the defendant doesn't have the money to fight it out.

That's bullshit. Myth takes all kinds of so-called legal risks. Hell - myth enables essentially permanent archival of recordings. The Sony Betamax case explicitly did not rule that fair use goes beyond short term time shifting to permanent archival. Yet myth has gone to great extremes to make it dirt simple, just plug in a disk in the mountpoint of a storage pool and viola! myth automagically figures out what recordings are there, cross references them in the database and makes them immediately available.

The guy pussied out on one 'risk,' but is happy to take others and nobody can criticize him for it? Bullshit.

.01 Really?

[Telvin_3d]

So, let's get this right, in this update they have:
- Major back-end changes
- Major UI rewrite
- Significant new hardware support
- Also, apparently a more powerful themes toolkit

And this isn't even worth a .1 version increment. It's a .01

Really, if the version numbers are going to be this meaningless for tracking significant changes they should at least name them or come up with some other system. Something that let's people get interested and involved in the project and excited about the new release.

Re:.01 Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that people got interested and involved because of... well, the list of fancy new features. If it was called "Dastardly DVR," think it would somehow improve it?

In that case, it's actually MythTV Eleventy Thrillion, Titty Tivo!

Re:.01 Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean version 0.1 will play my bluray collection?
I'm in!

Re:.01 Really?

[Captain Segfault]

Their numbering scheme is incremented in .01's. It would not be consistent with their scheme to increment by .10.

Although I agree -- if they aren't close to a 1.0 they should consider moving to a two-dot system ("0.2.3") which would make it clearer when a release has large destabilizing changes.

Re:.01 Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously man, it's just a number. Version numbering is just made up by some human programers for a release to convey a notion of a fixed release for other humans. You seem to think a 1.0 release means stable or that a 1.2 release necessary conveys anything other than some people decided to call it 1.2. In this case some people decided to call it .22. Cool.

Re:.01 Really?

[Telvin_3d]

Well, let's put it another way. Say you tried it at .20 and found that it was interesting but still too rough for your needs. Now, you are browsing around and see in passing that the current version is .22. Now, based on that .02 difference do you think that it has gone through major changes and deserves a second look or has it just been tweaked a little?

No, don't go overboard. It doesn't need to be silly but it does need to provide a realistic feel of how the project is progressing. If your release notes are including the words 'major' and 'significant' and 'large changes' and 'major rewrite' it might be a good clue that it's worth going up by an entire .1

Or since I'm sure all these didn't happen over night or perfectly in sync it may have called for some internal development releases that would have this public release be 2.5 or something.

Or, yes, give it a name. It works for Ubuntu.

Re:.01 Really?

[Anaerin]

The only "Numbered Releases" they release are stable, supported versions. If you wish to try a bleeding-edge development version, you check out the source from SVN trunk, making sure you subscribe to the -dev and -commit mailing lists to stay abreast of the current state of the tree. So, by releasing 0.22, they are saying "This is the latest version of the tree that we guarantee is stable, and will support/fix, since 0.21."

Each release will do it's best to upgrade an existing environment if possible, and will back up settings/database configuration before attempting the upgrade, so changes can be rolled back.

As for the FUD about having to configure ffmpeg/Qt/XvMC/DirectFB/DirectX etc., ./configure will detect what you have installed (Qt 4 is a requirement, as is Xv (for a frontend, which should be a part of your video driver anyway)). All the other libraries (XvMC, VDPAU, OpenGL, JACK/ARTS/ALSA/OSS, IVTV, DVB/ATSC) are all optional. If you wish to use them, you must have them installed correctly, but beyond that, there is no other need to do anything special. A standard "./configure && make && sudo make install" will build and install a working setup, that you can then tweak and modify to your heart's content.

The "Problem" came because MythTV is a complex piece of software, that can make use of a lot of subsystems within Linux, and requires them all to be working properly. Given Linux's previously troublesome driver support for some hardware, it's understandable why MythTV has got a bad name, but drivers and libraries have matured much since 0.19 (The last really problematic release). And with MythTV distros (Like KnoppMyth, MythDora, MythBuntu and LinHES), things are much easier than ever before.

Re:.01 Really?

[coldmist]

It's just a number. Really.

Would it matter if it was going from version 2007 to 2009 (like MS office)? That's only a 0.1% change. At least .21 to .22 is a 4.5% change!

Re:.01 Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a .1 increment. Try looking up how Polynomials work.

Re:.01 Really?

[Tolkien]

You've been influenced by one too many marketing reps.

Re:.01 Really?

[Tolkien]

Again, you've been influenced by one too many marketing reps.

Re:.01 Really?

[JohnBailey]

Really, if the version numbers are going to be this meaningless for tracking significant changes they should at least name them or come up with some other system. Something that let's people get interested and involved in the project and excited about the new release.

Since when have version numbers been consistently meaningful across more than one project/program? Just do like everybody else and see a new version number as an indicator that there is something different from the last version. Version numbers ARE meaningless.

Re:.01 Really?

[Thnurg]

Software versioning does not necessarily follow the decimal system.
It has not gone from "point two one to point two two".
It has gone from "dot twenty one to dot twenty two", which in standard software versioning terms means it is still on the original code base but has had extra features added.

Re:.01 Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

21 + 1 is ?

You sir are an idiot!

Re:.01 Really?

[andersa]

It's just an integer increment. 1, 2, 3, ..., 19, 20, 21, 22, and so on. And they do a major rewrite of some part of it every time.

Re:.01 Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

So? What's your point? Telvin brings up a rather excellent point. Make it sound more interesting and you'll have more interest. Period.

Re:.01 Really?

[BikeHelmet]

I'm not a fan of arbitrary naming instead of incremental, but I agree that it needs a bigger version bump.

Projects like this usually have timelines that go something like this:

2002 -> 2009: 0.01 -> 0.22
2009 -> 2011: 0.23 -> 0.74
2011 -> 2012: 0.74 -> 2.2

Not saying it'll happen with MythTV - but version numbers seem to arbitrarily accelerate as soon as v1 is passed. They also accelerate on approach to v1.

I much prefer build numbers.

Software v1.1 b135
Software v1.1 b158
Software v1.2 b192
etc.

The benefit is, you can put out 15 (or however many) different builds for a version with a given featureset, and not be forced into giving it a new number.

I've also seen build numbers match the date of compilation. Ex:

Software v1.1 b091109

But this doesn't exactly keep it simple for people. Not a problem for most linux projects, but probably not good if you need to market anything.

Re:.01 Really?

[iamjoltman]

You seem to be confused. '.22' doesn't mean '.2.2' it's just a single revision number. So going from .21 to .22 is no less meaningful than going from .1 to .2

Re:.01 Really?

[agrif]

Versions are numbered this way due to tradition.

Each numbered part of a version number is supposed to be taken on it's own as an integer. The jump from 0.2 to 0.3 is the same as 0.21 to 0.22. And yes, this means that version 0.2 is much earlier than 0.20, whether or not that makes intuitive sense.

I'm not saying that these scheme makes any sense, or really helps at all for people new to open source. I'm just saying that's how this particular tradition works, and given time most people pick it up easily enough.

(While on the topic of versioning traditions, a lot of projects go by major.minor.revision, with revision changed for each packaged release, minor with new features / binary changes, and major for complete rewrites. Gnome 2.26.n? OGRE? Often, if minor is odd, the software is a development release. This tends to happen a lot with GNU software, too.)

Re:.01 Really?

[ookaze]

Well, let's put it another way. Say you tried it at .20 and found that it was interesting but still too rough for your needs. Now, you are browsing around and see in passing that the current version is .22. Now, based on that .02 difference do you think that it has gone through major changes and deserves a second look or has it just been tweaked a little?

And while you're stuck with your obsessive compulsive nonsense on version numbers, people that actually care are using it.
Besides, it's not .20, it's 0.20, and it's a version number, meaning it can become 0.22.1 for example. You must learn to read more carefully, you managed to miss the "0" a lot.
I guess you only focus on useless things.

Re:.01 Really?

[Interoperable]

What they really need to do is define a version numbering scheme that results in a series that converges to v1.0. At the end of time it will be within an epsilon-neighborhood of being usable by the general public.

Re:.01 Really?

[Bookem Danno]

Maybe all software developers don't do it this way, but technically 0.21 to 0.22 IS a 0.1 increase. Version numbers don't work like normal decimals - 0.22 actually should be read as 22nd sub version. If it wasn't done this way, you would run into a problem if you got to 0.9 and made a 0.1 increment.

But your point is still a good one - if this is a major change, lets call a spade a spade and make this version 1.0. Now, I know that will attract the wolves - FOSS developers have a habit of holding their major version numbers at 0 to indicate they are in beta (seemingly forever).

Re:.01 Really?

[JWW]

MythTV versioning has always been goofy. Been using it since 0.11 and yes every 0.01 increase is a major release.

Re:.01 Really?

[LordKronos]

It's not a .01 increment. In myth, the 0. denotes that this is still what they consider prerelease (ie: not ready for the mass market), and beyond that it's just version numbers. This is version 22, previous version was 21. The numbering works perfectly fine for me.

Re:.01 Really?

[Culture20]

I've also seen build numbers match the date of compilation. Ex: Software v1.1 b091109 But this doesn't exactly keep it simple for people. Not a problem for most linux projects, but probably not good if you need to market anything.

Windows 95, Office '97, Windows 98(se), Windows 2000, Office 2000, Windows Server 2003, Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010. Someone thinks it's a good idea for marketing.

Re:.01 Really?

[Locutus]

when you don't care to hit the 1.0 number, you start low and move slow. In 20 years, when they start getting close to .99, they'll probably start nudging by .001 or even go alphanumeric for an even slower progression to 1.0 ;-)

But who really cares as long as it works and does a decent job at what it does?

LoB

Re:.01 Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you missed it, most people absolutely hate versions, software 7.0 etc.

It's very cool to use internal versioning, build numbers etc but to people who are looking for what MythTV provides 0.21 to 0.22 seems an incredibly small change. This is small bugfix terrority, not major rewrite.

Would you disagree the normal software version for a version that is stable and does somewhat what it's meant to do is 1.0? If that's the premise and 0.21 to 0.22 takes 1½ years, well... 1.0 is pretty far off.

Re:.01 Really?

[Blakey Rat]

Windows 95, Office '97, Windows 98(se), Windows 2000, Office 2000, Windows Server 2003, Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010. Someone thinks it's a good idea for marketing.

But those are names, not version numbers. The idea of using names instead of versions was already brought up-- please try to keep up!

Office 2007 is actually Office 12, for example. Word, for example, has the version: 12.0.6504.5000 (the last two are build numbers or patch numbers, I would wager.)

Re:.01 Really?

[Trogre]

I agree this merits more than a 0.01 increment. However this change isn't going from MythTV 0.2.1 -> 0.2.2, it's 0.21 -> 0.22 which, in the software version world, equates to minor number 22, not 2. Remember we're not talking about a single-point decimal system here.

Another example - my system is currently running Linux kernel 2.6.30, which is quite different from version 2.6.3

Re:.01 Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you only focus on useless things.

But if he's not the only one, then he still has a point. There is some truth in the saying, "perception is reality".

Re:.01 Really?

[AngelWind]

Office 2010 is version 14. Where did version 13 go? I guess Office 2008.5 wouldn't work for their numbering scheme.

Re:.01 Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you skip version 13, then you avoid all the silly jokes, plus you don't alienate the very small number of (silly) people who actually think the number 13 carries with it some kind of "bad luck". InstallShield skipped version 13; other apps probably have also. I've heard that some buildings skip the 13th floor to avoid perceptions of "unluckiness", but I've never actually seen this.

- T

Can't wait for 1.0

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be amazing by then!

Re:Can't wait for 1.0

[Thinboy00]

It'll never get to 1.0, but it might get to .999...

Re:Can't wait for 1.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like gazillion times better then WMC-7!
And sure enough it will finally support HDCP, 'cause without HDCP it is almost useless.
(no, my grans can't rip blurays from CLI)

Re:Can't wait for 1.0

[smchris]

I tell my wife it will say, "No, Jennifer, I will not open the pod bay door until you have watched all your recordings."

database

[visualight]

Did they fix the database encoding in this one?

Re:database

[Thinboy00]

[from his sig]
--
Boycott Hollywood during December 2009 [No DVD's for Christmas, no Christmas BlockBusters] Spread the word.

Why, might I ask? (I suppose my sig makes this question kind of ironic/dumb-sounding... What specifically have they done this time?)

Re:database

[swillden]

Did they fix the database encoding in this one?

That depends on what you mean by "fix".

With MythTV 0.22, the database is expected to be configured with the UTF-8 character set. If you're upgrading a database that has been used with a previous version (which required the database to use the latin1 character set), you need to fix your database.

I would guess that if you're using MythTV as packaged by a major distro, by the time your distro delivers 0.22 it will probably handle the character set conversion automatically.

Re:database

[paul248]

Ah, yes, I had to do the "fix your database" thing yesterday. Based on the complexity of the guide, I'm guessing a lot of users will just wipe and reinstall everything, rather than attempt to go through that ridiculous manual process.

Re:database

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of using the UTF8 character set that the mysql devs have requested, mythtv makes you force your mysql installation to use the latin1 character set. Nope they haven't fixed it- now they just blame the problem on whatever distros don't automatically force mysql into latin1. I had to change some config files and dump and reload my database to get it to work with the new version. And from what I have read I wouldn't wait for them to fix it - they don't believe they have a problem.

Re:database

[wagnerrp]

If you're upgrading a database that has been used with a previous version (which required the database to use the latin1 character set), you need to fix your database.

Not exactly. The various MythTV binaries are supposed to cleanly update any 0.21 database to 0.22. The character set conversion issue described on that page is due to the default MySQL settings as shipped with Gentoo.

Re:database

[RedWizzard]

Instead of using the UTF8 character set that the mysql devs have requested, mythtv makes you force your mysql installation to use the latin1 character set. Nope they haven't fixed it- now they just blame the problem on whatever distros don't automatically force mysql into latin1. I had to change some config files and dump and reload my database to get it to work with the new version. And from what I have read I wouldn't wait for them to fix it - they don't believe they have a problem.

Well done, you've got it exactly wrong. 0.22 requires the server to be utf8.

Re:database

[mickwd]

If you're using Gentoo, you might find this blog post interesting:

MythTV 0.22 & the database problem

Re:database

[Dr_Barnowl]

Not those of us with wives that have enormous emotional investments in their collection of Jane Austen movies...

Re:database

[visualight]

The goal is to get them to change their behavior "in general". Copyright extensions, the DMCA, the super secret ACTA negotiations, not one specific thing. I already quit spending money on their products two years ago, and for that time, whenever I hear anyone complaining about *AA I tell them to quit going to the movies then, and be vocal about why. In my opinion nothing else will be effective. Most people (here on slashdot and irl) seem to think that no one will else will do it (and other excuses) so they might as well keep financing the behavior they're complaining about. Maybe they could do it for a month though.

ACTA is what prompted me to change my sig. It's Christmas season. If by some miracle the idea catches on the money people behind the *AA's will certainly get the message, and so will the politicians they bribe. I don't have resources for a campaign, just a sig. I could spend a year working on a vehicle but maybe someone who already has one will see this.

Re:database

[Anonymous Coward]

Ridiculous? It was like 4 steps! I think it should have been handled a little better but the conversion process was hardly difficult.

Re:database

[Rich0]

The character set conversion issue described on that page is due to the default MySQL settings as shipped with Gentoo.

If I'm not mistaken, the Gentoo defaults were those recommended by the mysql project. Essentially, Gentoo just passed on the mysql defaults without fiddling with them.

IMHO, no application should rely on database default settings, or if they do they should rely on them being set to the defaults recommended by the database vendor / ANSI / etc. The reason is simple - if you don't do it this way then suddenly two applications using the same database server could have differing configuration requirements, with no way to satisfy them.

Re:database

[swillden]

If you're upgrading a database that has been used with a previous version (which required the database to use the latin1 character set), you need to fix your database.

Not exactly. The various MythTV binaries are supposed to cleanly update any 0.21 database to 0.22. The character set conversion issue described on that page is due to the default MySQL settings as shipped with Gentoo.

Thanks for the correction.

Re:database

[wagnerrp]

If I'm not mistaken, the Gentoo defaults were those recommended by the mysql project. Essentially, Gentoo just passed on the mysql defaults without fiddling with them.

I was not intending to blame one party or another, just indicate that the above fix was only for a specific subset of users.

Re:database

[AngelWind]

Then why do they want you to type this when you re-set up your database? ALTER DATABASE mythconverg DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1;

Re:database

[zenyu]

The 99% of MythTV users not using Gentoo and not mucking with their database encodings just need to run mythtv-setup for the upgrade to happen.

The MythTV 0.22 upgrade process automatically converts the database from utf8 strings encoded in mysql latin1 strings to utf8 encoded in mysql utf8 strings. In order for the upgrade process to work the initial default character set must be latin1, as that was the requirement for all prior versions of MythTV. This is not the case for everyone because they either ignored the frequent warnings in the MythTV documentation and wiki about data corruption that it would create if they changed the character set of the database, or because their server was configured to perform on the fly conversions of the character set. Mostly the first set knew what they were doing and accepted the risk, but the second set of users were using Gentoo which by default shipped a broken combination of MythTV and mysql.

The brokeness was due to the fact that while MythTV did set the character set of the database to latin1 in previous versions, it did not specify that the connection to the database use latin1. Those who followed the MythTV documentation when setting up their systems changed the Gentoo defaults to ones that MythTV could cope with, those who made the mistake of using the ebuilds without looking at the installation documentation have to follow some simple directions to fix their database prior to the upgrade. MythTV automatically makes a backup of the database prior to the upgrade unless the user opts not to, so even those who repeat the mistake of using the ebuild will be able to revert to a working state and fix their database.

Internally, MythTV uses UTF-16 strings everywhere in 0.22 and in prior versions. Conversions only happen when dealing with databases and filesystems that require a different encoding.

I for one welcome...

[drewzhrodague]

I for one welcome our MythTV .22 Overlords!

I've been using MythTV for a bunch of years now, and I find it an absolute blast. It works on every PC I can find, and even on my work OSX laptop, which still lets me watch The It's Alive Show while I'm hacking away. It even eats the commercials, and does a better job with digital television signals. I can't wait for multirec support for my HDHomeRun.

If you haven't tried MythTV recently, check it out again.

Re:I for one welcome...

[BLKMGK]

You were doing great up until that "it works on everything" part. Plenty of folks have pulled their hair out with Myth in the past and you make it sound like a breeze. Look at the numbers of folks posting here that have given up on it and you can plainly see it's far from easy. I for one hope that this version is VERY good but please, the rah rah it works great stuff can be saved - most of us know better having tried it already.

I lent out my HDHR to someone having given up on Myth previously. I have spare hardware though so maybe I'll try it again but if it's half as bad as the last time I'll put it down again. The Myth guys really have an uphill climb convincing people IMO. Myth seems like the epitome of what people have issues with when they talk about Linux. Funky config scripts, hair pulling, things that don't make sense, things that just don't work, picky hardware, painful broken upgrades, the list is long. A new version is great news, lets see if it flies. Call me cautious having been bitten about 5 times previously by this software!

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

So when you post that it's crap/hard to use/impossible/backwards/etc. it's fact, but when he posts that it works well for him and that he's satisfied, it's "the rah rah it works great stuff" that can be "saved?" What makes his opinion less valid than yours?

Personally, I'm a long time myth user and I love it, in the interest of full disclosure. There's a TON that Myth could do better, but the devs are being very up front, especially lately, about trying to focus on the basic issues of a) easy configuration, b) improved UI, and c) too many settings. "b" was addressed in part this release, with a public effort on "a" and "c" scheduled for the next development cycle. For the first time ever, a release date for the next version has already been announced and the devs have solicited public comment on some of the big plans for a release scheduled for an unheard of 4 months from now. Anyone who has been around MythTV for a while knows what a turnaround that is.

That's not to say that myth's problems are all fixed-- they're not. But his opinion is just as valid, and every bit as true, as yours.

Re:I for one welcome...

[reub2000]

No it is not easy. But once you set it up, it's worth it.

Re:I for one welcome...

[ookaze]

You were doing great up until that "it works on everything" part. Plenty of folks have pulled their hair out with Myth in the past and you make it sound like a breeze.

You were doing passable until "in the past". You wrongly assume that MythTV 0.22 is the same as 0.20, and this is your big problem. The same as 0.20 because 0.21 worked great already.

Look at the numbers of folks posting here that have given up on it and you can plainly see it's far from easy.

I see less people that failed a long time ago (surely with 0.20 or OS problems) than people I installed MythTV for, and for whom it works great. The sole thing not working "right" is the XMLTV part where I live, because it's not based on SchedulesDirect like provider yet (there are alternatives though).

I for one hope that this version is VERY good but please, the rah rah it works great stuff can be saved - most of us know better having tried it already.

No, you don't know better at all. As soon as you had problems, you ran everywhere saying it doesn't work, like you're doing now. I've actually used the development version of 0.22 without any issue till this day, and will soon swith to the stable one. So I've actually used 0.22 while you obviously have not.
And sure enough it works great, even better than 0.21 that was already working great.

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not mythtv...its the underlying os that needs better support for the various capture cards & remots out there....

Just for the record...I use mythbantu 8.04...it was a bitch to set up...but once it started to work...its a charm.

Re:I for one welcome...

[BLKMGK]

So upgrades and updates are smooth? OS updates don't break things? Scrapers don't break? Scheduling just works? Come on now, tell the truth! ;-)

What people want is an appliance. What a TIVO is to the average consumer is what people would like Myth to be. tinkering is fun but when you're tinkering on something pretty central to the family's entertainment you can draw a lynch mob with torches and pitchforks pretty quickly. This is why so many people put up with crap cable DVRs - they mostly just work and don't require a geek in the house to craft scripts. When Myth becomes THAT easy people will flock to it. And we'll be ice skating in hell I fear. I'm willing to put in time, and I will try this new release, but I have little doubt that it won't present "challenges"...

Re:I for one welcome...

[BLKMGK]

I suppose the problem is that even previously there were all sorts of supporters willing to tell me it worked GREAT for them, except it didn't for me or for many others. I promise you I'm not the only one feeling burned by past promises - look around.

Mind you I'd LOVE to be proven wrong. I'd love to load it up and have it just work with my hardware, we'll see. I may wait for MythBuntu to rev and incorporate this new code or I might fire up Ubuntu and load it as a package - maybe both. I have spare hardware, I have an HDHR tuner loaned out I can get back, I'm willing to try it once again. But having been burned multiple times before - just like everyone else - I'm not exactly going in with really high expectations.

We'll see. Right now I simply torrent shows but I'm willing to try Myth again and maybe even KMTTG to pull stuff off my TIVO HD PVR too. If nothing this will give me something to tinker with, I just would like it to eventually be an appliance I don't have to care and feed for endlessly...

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't say it works on everything, but 0.22 works pretty well with my pcHDTV cards. Previously the analog receivers caused frequent backend crashes, but it runs reliably now. It's very usable at this point for me.

Re:I for one welcome...

[houghi]

I tried in once and lost a couple of days. I then just wrote a script around ivtv-tune and was done in an hour or so.
`ivtv-tune --device=/dev/video0 -teurope-west -f 259.25` will show bbc2.
Exporting it to an avi file with mencoder will record it. Using `at` I can determine the start and end time.
mplayer to view either directly from video0 or from the recorded avi file with MPlayer.

It could very well be that MythTV is great, but I won't bother with it, unless there is an extremely easy way to install it. To me it is way too much overkill.
I want to be able to watch TB on my PV while working and that I can do with MPlayer. I want to record and that I can do with mencoder. I do not need a database for the 40 stations I have (and only watch about 12 of them)

I just don't have automatic programming for Belgium. I just look at http://rcapp.persgroep.be/epg_j2ee/epg/pag/epg_toon.jsp and see what I might want to record.

Re:I for one welcome...

[BLKMGK]

Well, there are rolled up packages to install it and then there's a dedicated distro called Mythbuntu that I've found mostly easier back when I was trying to get this working. Those would be the "easier" ways but in my past experience easier didn't equal easy so we'll see how it goes this time around...

Re:I for one welcome...

[Blakey Rat]

I didn't even get to MythTV. I gave up trying to get the fucking IVTV driver to work with my video capture card-- what a piece of shit. (The driver, not the card. The card worked fine in Windows.)

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

So upgrades and updates are smooth? OS updates don't break things? Scrapers don't break? Scheduling just works? Come on now, tell the truth! ;-)

What people want is an appliance.

At least on Debian, upgrades are smooth as silk. Never had a problem with the debian-multimedia packages.

OS updates hardly ever interfere with MythTV. If anything, they break drivers for the hardware that Myth is trying to use, and that's hardly Myth's fault.

Same deal with scrapers: Hardly Myth's fault if the XMLTV project can't keep up with the schedules websites changing layout all the time. Personally I use the DVB onair EIT and that works fine. Likewise for the Radiotimes UK Scraper.

Oh and if people want an appliance, that's just what they should buy. MythTV isn't for the faint at heart, there's quite a lot of documentation to be read to understand how it actually works. Once that's done however, installing it isn't really that hard. I've done 2 MythTV installs so far, one took me about two weeks, with 1-2 hours per day of work on it... most of it actually went to getting the hardware to run and configuring things like LIRC. The second one was fully up and running after 2-3 hours (really helps to have previous experience with it and some working examples). I have not found any insurmountable problem with it yet, so I'm actually quite surprised at the amount of comments mentioning complete functional failure here.

As for the crashing: My backend does crash at times, typically while I am watching TV from it (very very rarely when it's just doing normal background work like recording, transcoding or commercial detection). I just have 'monit' watch it and bring it back up when it does bail out.

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

I do get the feeling that many here blame MythTV for issues with their hardware/drivers or other software (LIRC, XMLTV, ...). Most of the time I spent on setting up my first MythTV installation actually went into those bits, and not into the actual MythTV installation/configuration.

Re:I for one welcome...

[houghi]

A distribution that does the same I do with about 100 lines of bash? Talk about overkill. I think that is what is wrong with MythTV. It is overengineered.

Re:I for one welcome...

[reub2000]

OS updates definitely have the ability to disrupt things. That's why I recommend staying far away from a rolling release like gentoo or arch.

I have very rarely had things break once set up properly. I've had things like the partition holding the mysql database corrupted and the northbridge fan breaking. But your cable company DVR doesn't let me setup a frontend on my laptop.

Re:I for one welcome...

[BLKMGK]

Yes, I think part of the issue with Myth is that it tries to do so much. That said, I am betting that most casual users and family would find it more friendly than your bash script ;-)

Re:I for one welcome...

[BLKMGK]

Well, I'll be grabbing Mythbuntu tonight and tinkering. I managed to retrieve my HDHR today from my coworker. He too is going to be interested to see how I fare. Mythbuntu has the RC in their code now so we'll see how this goes. Hopefully the release version will follow shortly. If I run into issues I'll go straight Ubuntu and then load Myth as a package - I don't mind burning some time if the result works and I learn something.

Hrm, I have Win7 here too. Might be interesting to explore it's capabilities with the HDHR as well!

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the numbers of folks posting here that have given up on it and you can plainly see it's far from easy.

Personally I look the the (vastly greater) number of folks not posting here that have not give up on it, since it works very well and with few problems for them, and I can plainly see it's far easier now than it used to be.

Apparently, you are still stuck in the past.

You might want to check it again, with a fresh set of eyes.

Perhaps it would work better for you this time.

Re:I for one welcome...

[drewzhrodague]

You were doing great up until that "it works on everything" part. Plenty of folks have pulled their hair out with Myth in the past and you make it sound like a breeze. Look at the numbers of folks posting here that have given up on it and you can plainly see it's far from easy. I for one hope that this version is VERY good but please, the rah rah it works great stuff can be saved - most of us know better having tried it already.

In my experience, it does work on every PC I've run it on. It even works on my OSX work laptop.

I have had trouble getting crappy hardware to work, but I can hardly blame MythTV. Once it works, it just keeps working. I think some people may have a hard time figuring out how to install drivers and getting their machine to work in the first place. This is when I switched from Centos over to KnoppMyth. Installed, detected my new PVR-150, and worked until successive upgrades.

Now I have three and a half computers dedicated to MythTV. One is a recording-only host that connects to the CableTV HDHomerun. One was driving my analog projector until the projector power supply went -- it recorded from the Antenna HDHomerun. Then I have another one with my old PVR-150, which also drives the old TV downstairs. The other half is the master backend and MySQL database with no tuner. I am using Centos, and the atrpms yum repositories.

I just did a channel-scan after my upgrade, and I seem to have more channels, and also the audio channels from my sub-basic Comcast cable feed. I think I get more enjoyment out of harvesting television shows than I do by watching them. Think Captain Kirk's head on a 6-foot screen.

Re:Too bad Linux is for faggots.

[Thinboy00]

Are you high? What drug is that? Where can I get some (note to the humorless feds: I am kidding)?

Re:Not important

[Thinboy00]

err.. How do you breastfeed a keyboard layout?

woosh!

.01 and the TV Myth

[syousef]

Clearly you haven't dealt with MythTV. The myth is that you get to watch and record TV. The reality is you spend all your time fiddling with it and cursing at it until your head is so bloody from banging it up against a brick wall that you give up and decide to give up TV altogether.

Re:.01 and the TV Myth

[Anonymous Coward]

I've given up trying to get MythTV running twice now. Each attempt to get MythTV running took about a month of my life's quiet unoccupied time (a day here, a few hours there). All spent and no mythTV. I need a different option. MythTV installation is the OPPOSITE of what linux needs. And it has the potential to be the killer App because windows people love TV and there's no free answer for windows, either.

Re:.01 and the TV Myth

[dgatwood]

The reality is you spend all your time fiddling with it and cursing at it until your head is so bloody from banging it up against a brick wall that you give up and decide to give up TV altogether.

Close. The reality is that you spend so much time banging your head up against a brick wall that you just think you're watching TV.

Re:.01 and the TV Myth

[cowbutt]

Speak for yourself. My MythTV system has been happily recording and playing back TV for over three years. I used Jarod C. Wilson's guide. I think it took about a day to get the core functionality working, then I got the rest (emulator games, playback improvements, IR remote behaviour) tweaked to my liking over the course of the next month.

Re:.01 and the TV Myth

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using myth 4 at least 3 years without issue. Initially I got it set up, and wrote some parsers for podcast and xml feeds.
Recently comcast switched to digital converter boxes. That took a couple hours to get working because the codes they used.
Anyways, it just works for me. I can watch tv from any laptop in the house, use my iphone as a remote or the IR remote.

I am running Kubuntu 8.04 and haven't had any problems.

Re:.01 and the TV Myth

[JWW]

I agree. My original myth box died after 5 years due to HD failure. While setting that up took a good week or so the first time, with one major update consuming 1 day, when I built the new box I installed Mythbuntu and was running 0.21 in hours with only a few minor config issues to mess with that we fixed relatively easily.

Re:.01 and the TV Myth

[gukin]

I just installed Mandriva 2010 this weekend with the new .22 version, I got it all set up and mythweb working in less than an hour, the new features and front-end are quite nice and it looks great.

All that and there is STILL nothing on TV worth watching.

Re:.01 and the TV Myth

[Rudeboy777]

... you give up and decide to give up TV altogether.

Now THIS is a feature worth advertising in this release!

Re:.01 and the TV Myth

[spinkham]

Mythbuntu. MythTV done Easy.

Re:.01 and the TV Myth

[flithm]

The reality is you spend all your time fiddling with it and cursing at it until your head is so bloody from banging it up against a brick wall that you give up and decide to give up TV altogether.

Close. The reality is that you spend so much time banging your head up against a brick wall that you just think you're watching TV.

I know that these are funny, but just so people know, it's really not true. Setting up MythTV is really quite easy, and if you're building a box specifically to run mythtv hardware support is a complete non-issue. Get one of the better capture cards (check the support list), and everything Will Just Work.

I've been running Myth for years, and there was a time when installing it was problematic to say the least, but seriously, setting up MythTV these days is no harder than installing an app from your package manager, running through a few configuration screens, maybe signing up for a listing service. That's it!

Re:.01 and the TV Myth

[WindShadow]

I'm with you, I'm trying to find a Linux TV application for a group (I support their servers to some extent), and the need to do database work is a stopper. Office workers do not want to hear have your dba create... These folks have been using xawtv and tvtime, but since the analog sound vanished they need a new application. They're even talking about going back to that other operating system on their desks.

They have a feed which is mixed analog and digital, with the digital requiring a SIM. Their hardware supports it, but they need an application. They want something their in-house support can install, and that pretty much means install a few RPMs, not database stuff.

Does it save me from commercials?

[bogaboga]

I wonder whether this new release has an option of stripping out commercials from recordings on request. Does it? On prior releases one had to download a script, then go through a number of hops to get it working.

I hope it does and though the site is slashdotted, I thank folks at MythTV for their good work.

Re:Does it save me from commercials?

[Slick_W1lly]

It's done this for a while now - at least if you're in the US. The Brit and Oz commercials don't conform to the 'merikan sorts and I hear it's only about 20% effective. It doesn't help that the developers who work on the commercial stripping are all in the US... :(

But yes - You just set your recording up, click the little button saying 'flag commercials' and another little button somewhere in a playback screen that says 'Skip commercials' and Bob's your uncle...

Re:Does it save me from commercials?

[Abcd1234]

I wonder whether this new release has an option of stripping out commercials from recordings on request. Does it?

MythTV has had the ability to mark the positions of commercials in a piece of recorded content for ages now. It has not, and AFAIK, continues not to have the ability to automatically cut those commercials straight out of the recorded content. Why? Simple: The commercial stripper is far from perfect. It does a decent job most of the time, but it just as often screws up royally. So you really *don't* want it doing something irreversible to your recordings without active user intervention, which is why the solution has always involved a script and setting up a user job that can be triggered from the FE.

'course, I'm not sure why that's a problem. If you're watching the content on a MythTV FE, you can just tell it to automatically skip commercials, and it'll use the marked positions to skip in real-time. If your goal is to play out the content on another device, you probably want to transcode it, scale it, etc, before transferring it to your device (ie, ipod, etc), at which point you can instruct Myth to cut the commercials out.

Re:Does it save me from commercials?

[Windowser]

Once the show is recorded, there is a background job flagging the commercials. When I watch a show, I just hit Z to bypass the commercial in a millisecond.
Watching live TV is a pain now because of this !

Re:Does it save me from commercials?

[Techman83]

Use a dedicated distro and all the hard work is done for you. Such as LinHES for example.

Re:Does it save me from commercials?

[Anonymous Coward]

MythTV has had the ability to mark the positions of commercials in a piece of recorded content for ages now. It has not, and AFAIK, continues not to have the ability to automatically cut those commercials straight out of the recorded content.

The commercial marking is certainly not perfect, and also AFAIK it is not possible to _cut_ commercials automatically; but it's possible to skip marked commercials automatically during playback, it's an option in the settings. Whether one chooses to do so is a matter of preference; while it mostly works ok, there are false positives every now and then (although in my experience they're mostly closing credits, which I wouldn't watch anyway).

Re:Does it save me from commercials?

[Anonymous Coward]

I might be mistaken, but I believe if MythTV is configured to automatically flag commercials as well as automatically transcode them, the transcoded result will have the commercials removed (or whatever the cutlist is, be it from the automatic commercial flagging or the cutlist the user created in the video editor).

Re:Does it save me from commercials?

[BobMcD]

I might be mistaken, but I believe if MythTV is configured to automatically flag commercials as well as automatically transcode them, the transcoded result will have the commercials removed (or whatever the cutlist is, be it from the automatic commercial flagging or the cutlist the user created in the video editor).

As of .21 this not my experience. Flag, yes. Transcode, yes. Cut, no.

Re:Not important

[Anonymous Coward]

woosh!

Is it still same config nightmare?

[distantbody]

Do I still have to f**k around with 100 combinations/restarts of Qt, ffmpeg, XVideo, XvMC, libmpeg2, xv-blit, opengl, xlib, xshm, directfb, directx ...all whilst not being able to see the f**king mouse cursor and having to hit 'next' five times just to change one setting?

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[distantbody]

And that's just the front-end!

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Techman83]

Refer to my earlier post and you may find an answer :)

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[paul248]

Yep. Still as wonderful as ever!

[Next Next Next Next Next Submit.]

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Thnurg]

Only if you have told it not to display the mouse cursor.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Vitani]

You're forgetting the biggest gripe - having to run X on a backend-only server just so that it can be configured

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[cowbutt]

Um, what's wrong with:

desktop$ ssh -Y mythtv
mythtv$ mythtv-setup

Sure, you need the X libraries on the MythTV backend, but there's no need to run X on it!

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Vitani]

I've seen that mentioned before, but unfortunately (for me) that solution is slooooow. But that may be because my desktop PC is Windows-based and so I have to use putty & xming.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[cowbutt]

Admittedly, I've never tried it with Xming. But it's fine with a Linux/Xorg/openssh X server on a LAN. It's slow across ADSL/WAN, though.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Vitani]

Yeah, I once tried to configure MythTV over the Internet from work, that was a fun experiment! I think it took about 30 minutes to render the first screen, lol.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Abcd1234]

Meh, I just end up using vncserver on the backend. Technically, yeah, I'm running an X server on it, but it's still headless and remotely configurable.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes - although if you use a distribution with a competent package management system you can probably skip the 100 combinations part, leaving you with only the lack of a mouse cursor in the interface designed for use with a remote control and the config screens with text large enough to read from a TV several feet away (requiring multiple pages).

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Vitani]

That's fine until you have to reboot and X refuses to start because there's no monitor attached, then you have to faff about making a VGA nully-thingy with resistors.

It still boils down to the fact that a back-end should not need a GUI in order to be configured. Imagine if you couldn't configure Apache without a GUI, or MySQL?

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Abcd1234]

That's fine until you have to reboot and X refuses to start because there's no monitor attached, then you have to faff about making a VGA nully-thingy with resistors.

No, dumbass, there is no X server running! :) The system boots headless and just happens to have the X libs and other necessary trappings installed such that Xvnc's dependencies are satisfied. But no *real* X server (ie, one that talks to a video card, etc) is actually running on the system.

Then, if I need to run mythtv-setup, I just launch Xvnc, connect to it with my favorite VNC client, do the setup I need to do, then shut Xvnc back down.

TBH, based on your comments, it sounds like you just don't know what vncserver/Xvnc is? If not, educate yourself, my man. It's a very handy tool to have in your belt.

It still boils down to the fact that a back-end should not need a GUI in order to be configured. Imagine if you couldn't configure Apache without a GUI, or MySQL?

Yeah, OTOH if Myth *didn't* have a nice, pretty configuration system, people would bitch even more about how hard it is to set up. And given Xvnc is so trivial to get up and running, I don't think it's *that* big of a deal.

That said, I'm with you in that I'd be happier if they provided a text-mode configuration application, in addition to the GUI version. But it's hardly a deal breaker.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Vitani]

Wait, what? How do you run VNC without a desktop or anything installed? What does VNC render if there's no desktop to show? I think there's obviously a piece of this pie I'm missing...

I may come across as a newbie, but I've been using VNC for years (admittedly mainly in a Windows environment), and have a fairly basic idea of X (had to learn about it to understand how Xming worked) but I have no idea how VNC could work without some kind of desktop running on the server to show to the client. If you can educate me, then I would really appreciate the lesson :o)

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[slimjim8094]

In Linux, you generally use Xvnc as your X server. Applications run on that, and the 'monitor' is any network client. Unlike Windows, it's never even trying to output anything to the screen.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[jedidiah]

You bring up an interesting "philosophical" problem.

Do you give the end user ONE AND ONLY one option that may or may not work for them (like Apple)? Or do you give them some flexibility and sufficient tools to handle any situation that the developers might not have forseen.

The little bits of help text seem to be pretty easy to follow.

Oddly enough, there was a discussion of this very sort of "problem" on the user mailing list. While "canned" configurations are nice enough idea. The problem is pretty big, hardware and national variations are myriad, and you are bound to miss someone's use case.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Abcd1234]

And just as a bit more detail, X, itself, is just a network protocol. The client sends commands to the server to draw things, receive events (mouse, keyboard, etc), and so forth. Normally, the server then handles drawing commands by writing to a video card, translates hardware keyboard/mouse activity into X events that it sends back to the client, etc. But there's no reason the X server actually has to talk to hardware. For example, Xvfb, the X virtual framebuffer, implements the X protocol but doesn't actually render to a display, and doesn't interact with any input devices. It just provides something for the client to connect and render to (which, BTW, is really damned handy for running certain applications headless).

Meanwhile, VNC is really a similar sort of thing. The server sends (usually compressed) framebuffer data describing the screen back to the client, and the client sends keyboard/mouse events to the server. Normally, that framebuffer comes from a display that's being exported (eg, a Windows desktop, an existing X server display, etc), but that's just a technicality. All the VNC server is ultimately doing is sending back bitmap data and receiving events... where it gets that bitmap, and what it does with those events, is up to the server.

Now, imagine an X server implementation that renders to an internal framebuffer, exposing that framebuffer over VNC, and translates VNC client activity (mouse/keyboard) into events that it sends back to the X client. Voila! Suddenly you have a bridge which connects the X protocol to VNC that's entirely headless.

Incidentally, *this* is one of the reasons why, for all it's warts, X kicks ass. :)

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing x11vnc and vncserver (or just simply the way VNC works on Windows and the way it works on Linux)

VNC on Windows, and x11vnc, attach to what is already there, your Windows display, or your current X display respectively.

vncserver on Linux does no such thing. It spawns its own X session and attaches to it. (You won't see this session on your display devices, it only exists in memory.) You can actually spawn multiple vncservers and get multiple 'screens'.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Sloppy]

Do I still have to f**k around with 100 combinations/restarts of Qt, ffmpeg, XVideo, XvMC, libmpeg2, xv-blit, opengl, xlib, xshm, directfb, directx

Nope. I didn't have any trouble like that at al--

...all whilst not being able to see the f**king mouse cursor and having to hit 'next' five times just to change one setting?

Oh. Yeah, it's still like that.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[icepick72]

Isn't it open source, so missing someone's use case is okay because they will be able to do it themselves. The core development community certainly cannot meet everybody's use case no matter how hard they try. What they need is a product that works well, that is suitable for recognition IMO.

Re:Is it still same config nightmare?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, what? How do you run VNC without a desktop or anything installed? What does VNC render if there's no desktop to show? I think there's obviously a piece of this pie I'm missing...

Running VNC on a Linux server requires the X libraries and any libraries required by your choice of desktop environment, if any. It does not require any graphics card, connected monitor or anything like that, however. The desktop can be entirely virtual, i.e an in-memory desktop with no physical display adapter present or needed. This would be the typical scenario for a headless (and graphics-adapter-less) server for which you still want a graphical desktop environment accessible remotely.

I may come across as a newbie, but I've been using VNC for years (admittedly mainly in a Windows environment), and have a fairly basic idea of X (had to learn about it to understand how Xming worked) but I have no idea how VNC could work without some kind of desktop running on the server to show to the client. If you can educate me, then I would really appreciate the lesson :o)

There would be a desktop running on the server in the above scenario, but it would be independent of any physical display and display adapter. Note: You can have both a physical desktop (i.e displayed on an installed display adapter) and any number of virtual desktops (only running in-memory) running at the same time on the server in question.

I hope the above makes it a little bit clearer.

Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[tlhIngan]

Given official Hauppage HD-PVR support, this could be one of the best high-def DVRs out there. Especially when you combine it with an HD Fury2 to convert it to HDMI...

I don't know why the HD-PVR is the only capture card capable of high-def (1080i). HD Fury2 adds HDMI (with HDCP). Sure, it's only 1080i, but how many other high-def capture solutions are out there? For just over $500, you can get one that does HDMI/HDCP as well.

(HD Fury2 converts HDMI to Component or VGA. Sure it's analog, but the HD-PVR only has component inputs).

Especially good for those of us in Canada, where we are forced to use the ultra-crappy cableboxes. (It's why people go to TiVo...).

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[Osty]

Given official Hauppage HD-PVR support, this could be one of the best high-def DVRs out there. Especially when you combine it with an HD Fury2 to convert it to HDMI...

For OTA signals, sure. If you're on cable, ClearQAM is almost dead. Since the FCC granted the ability to encrypt non-premium channels, most cable providers have already done so for everything except locals.

Get back to me when MythTV allows support for CableCard tuners. That's the way of the future. For windows, Win7 got rid of the ridiculous bios requirement for CableCard-capable PCs, which means you no longer have to buy a $2000+ "media center" PC. As long as you have enough CPU, RAM, and an HDCP-capable video card, you can use a CableCard tuner with Win7 MCE. Currently only AMD/ATI have a digital cable tuner available, but Hauppage has said they're working on CableCard tuners and Ceton will have a 4-tuner solution using a single M-Card in Q1 of next year (beta hardware is already out there and working).

Personally, I just got a cheap PC that meets the CableCard requirements, put Win7 on it, and am waiting out the Ceton release. My Comcast DVR is going in the trash (okay, back to Comcast) just as soon as the Ceton tuner is available. Oh yeah, and I don't have to mess about with drivers, libraries, etc. MCE in Win7 just works (which was not always the case).

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[wagnerrp]

Get back to me when MythTV allows support for CableCard tuners.

MythTV has supported DVB-C CA modules for some time. Get back to me when someone releases CableCard drivers for Linux.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[Jellybob]

MCE in Win7 just works

And that is the crux of the matter really. I spent a long time messing around MythTV, and various frontends for it, but in the end I just installed Windows 7, and used MCE, which has been faultless since I did so.

It also has the benefit of working as a really, really, powerful games console.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[LordKronos]

For OTA signals, sure. If you're on cable, ClearQAM is almost dead.

Uhhh, perhaps you misread, but he was talking about the HD-PVR. It does component input capture. Encryption doesn't matter at that point, as your cable box has already decrypted it.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[JWW]

Yep, the HD-PVR looks pretty sweet. I've been waiting for this kind of device before jumping into hd cable. It also think its appalling that cable TV went all "early 80's" on us with the set top boxes for HD. I hope someday we'll be back to cable ready TV's for HD (they all really are anyway), but I fear the big cable companies may have won this battle this time. Oh well, if they keep mucking with it too much I may ditch the DVR part someday and just watch everything via download/hulu.....

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[joe_garage]

Rogers signal quality and compression of HD channels -- don't get me started !!

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesnt make sense - there are other capture cards that can handle 1080i. I use a dvico fusionhdtv7 dual express - supported since 2.6.27 or .28 I believe, $150, handles Clear-QAM and ATSC equally well.

I have never tried this, but MythTV is also supposed to work with the firewire port on many digital cable boxes, for channel changing and pulling of the video stream. This functionality is mandated in the US but I believe I read that it's not that way in Canada. If this option is available to you then that's another 1080i-capable recording option.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[jedidiah]

> Get back to me when MythTV allows support for CableCard tuners.

Get back to me when I can buy a PC CableCard tuner in Frys or MicroCenter.

Until then, all of this CableCard FUD is TOTAL NONSENSE.

I can buy an HDHomeRun or an HD-PVR in Frys TODAY along with a whole bunch of other PC capture devices.

PC CableCard tuners are total vaporware.

You would have an easier time finding/buying a cable box hacked to allow for full firewire output.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[jedidiah]

>> MCE in Win7 just works
>
> And that is the crux of the matter really. I spent a long time messing around MythTV, and various
> frontends for it, but in the end I just installed Windows 7, and used MCE, which has been faultless
> since I did so.

So where do I buy my "records HBO in HD" solution for MCE?

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[Osty]

Get back to me when I can buy a PC CableCard tuner in Frys or MicroCenter.

Soon. If Hauppauge is to be believed, they claim they'll have a CableCard tuner in stores by the end of this year. I'm not holding my breath on that one. Ceton, on the other hand, will have their 4-tuner card out early next year. They probably won't initially sell in B&M stores, since Ceton is a relatively small company, but they should be affordable (they're talking $600 as the high end for the 4-tuner card, or $150 per tuner) and available to purchase online.

Until then, all of this CableCard FUD is TOTAL NONSENSE.

That's because for years the CableCard guys required a "certified" PC in order to be able to use such a tuner. As of this fall, that restriction is now gone. Nobody besides ATI jumped into the market, because there literally was no market (nobody's going to buy a $2000+ PC just to get CableCard support when they can buy a $400 Tivo instead). Now that you can do that, the market is expanding. Give it time.

I can buy an HDHomeRun or an HD-PVR in Frys TODAY along with a whole bunch of other PC capture devices.

You must have a better Fry's than I do. Mine doesn't carry HDHRs in the store, though I could buy online and pick it up there. The rest of the tuners tend to be hit or miss in terms of supporting various features (ClearQAM, MCE, etc).

PC CableCard tuners are total vaporware.

Vaporware implies that they don't exist. They do. It's just that up until now you had to have a special BIOS in order to use them. You could buy the tuners through various sites like Cannon PC or Dell, but it didn't really matter if you didn't have the special BIOS (a hack was eventually developed prior to the relaxing of the restrictions, but most people weren't willing to gamble $250 on a hack).

You would have an easier time finding/buying a cable box hacked to allow for full firewire output.

If you're in the US and you have to hack your cable box in order to get firewire output, you need to call the FCC. Cable providers are required to provide a fully functional firewire connection on their STBs.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[Osty]

So where do I buy my "records HBO in HD" solution for MCE?

This is currently your only option (or its external counterpart). More coming soon.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[jedidiah]

So surely this thing must be available from Amazon, or NewEgg, or Tiger Direct or from the manufacturer's own website like the Haupauge 1212 was when it was first released?

What about those links?

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[jedidiah]

Like I said... vaporware that has no real connection with reality. It is just something that Windows Lemming trolls like to bring up in some sort of vain attempt to knock down any non-Microsoft alternative.

I can (and have) connected an HD-PVR to a $200 ION box.

No $2000 machine is required.

Of course a device that has hoops that NO ONE wants to jump through won't be terribly interesting.

If CableCard PC devices were out there in the wild in significant numbers than they might get hacked for all sorts of reasons (the least of which is Linux support).

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[Osty]

Like I said... vaporware that has no real connection with reality. It is just something that Windows Lemming trolls like to bring up in some sort of vain attempt to knock down any non-Microsoft alternative.

You can buy actual tuners right now and use them on any Win7 machine that fits the requirements (dual core CPU, 2GB RAM, HDCP-compliant GPU). The old requirement of a special bias is now gone, as I said, and the market for these tuners is spinning up. So yeah, sounds like vaporware to me ...

I can (and have) connected an HD-PVR to a $200 ION box.

Not anywhere near the same. HD-PVR is just a component video capture system and requires re-encoding the video, and still requires a STB with IR blaster. A CableCard tuner skips all of that, avoids re-encoding, and can have multiple tuners in a single package (see the Ceton card using M-card CableCards). And external USB CableCard tuners will work just fine on an ION box like the Aspire Revo 3600 (dual-core Atom, 2GB RAM).

Of course a device that has hoops that NO ONE wants to jump through won't be terribly interesting.

Those hoops are now gone. That's why other companies are starting to get into that market.

If CableCard PC devices were out there in the wild in significant numbers than they might get hacked for all sorts of reasons (the least of which is Linux support).

Back that up? ATI CableCard tuners are easily available. Buy one. Hack it. Make it work with Linux.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[Osty]

So surely this thing must be available from Amazon, or NewEgg, or Tiger Direct or from the manufacturer's own website like the Haupauge 1212 was when it was first released? What about those links?

Okay.

• Amazon
• Dell
• ATI doesn't have them for sale, but that's not surprising since ATI's actually trying to get out of the digital cable tuner market.
• Newegg doesn't sell CableCard tuners. Yet. As the market picks up with mulitple players (Hauppauge and Ceton for starters), I expect Newegg to start selling something.

We're currently in a chicken-and-egg situation. CableCard tuners have been available for the past couple of years, but CableLabs were being retarded and required a special BIOS in order for the tuners to work so only ATI bothered with the market. At CEDIA 2009, that changed and new manufacturers have decided to enter the market, but it takes time to develop, test, and manufacture a product. Ask this question again in March of 2010 and there should be several tuners available on the market.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[jedidiah]

Let's see...

      Amazon: Out of stock.
      Dell: Out of stock.

      ATI: None are for sale.

Like I said: CableCard tuners are vaporware for FUD mongers.

Want HD? Go to Frys and buy hardware that's not just vapor. Then find an app for your OS that will support it. MCE probably won't.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[jedidiah]

More "out of stock" nonsense.

There's no need to listen to FUD mongers. You can go to Fry's today and buy something real.

"Re-encoding" is not the horror that the purveyors of vapor make it out to be. Even with an S1 Tivo, you get a lot of mileage out of a nice clean signal. Something that's a good clean 720p or 1080i signal is not likely to generate noticeable artifacts. As far as an IR blaster being such a tragedy goes: it didn't stop Tivo.

Although my setup uses USB rather than an IR blaster.

Plus, a cable card centric solution will unfortunately limit you to your singular local land line monopoly (no dish or directv).

If I wanted to put up with my local monopoly and a vendor that's in bed with Big Content, then I could just buy a Tivo.

Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...

[Osty]

Even with an S1 Tivo, you get a lot of mileage out of a nice clean signal. Something that's a good clean 720p or 1080i signal is not likely to generate noticeable artifacts. As far as an IR blaster being such a tragedy goes: it didn't stop Tivo.

The S1 and S2 Tivos were not HD. In fact all HD Tivos (HD and S3) use CableCards. Hrm ...

Plus, a cable card centric solution will unfortunately limit you to your singular local land line monopoly (no dish or directv).

CableCard does not technically mean land line cable. FiOS uses CableCard, for example. Unfortunately for satellite there's no good solution.

If I wanted to put up with my local monopoly and a vendor that's in bed with Big Content, then I could just buy a Tivo.

If you really cared about not dealing with a vendor in bed with "Big Content", you'd use nothing but OTA via antenna. In which case all your problems would be solved, since there are dozens of ATSC tuners that work just fine for cheap. On the other hand, you could be like me -- I'm in a very hilly, wooded area so antenna access isn't really an option. Satellite is a no-go because it can't hook up to a PC in a sane way, leaving only cable or FiOS. FiOS isn't yet available to me (supposedly coming some time next year -- my town already has a deal with Verizon predating the Frontier sale, and they're actively working on it. They're just going very slowly and haven't gotten to my neighborhood yet), leaving Comcast.

Hurray for HD Hauppauge Support!

[fragMasterFlash]

So I can finally get support for my Hauppauge HD tuner without compiling super-glitchy drivers? This would be awesome if my cable provider wasn't moving all non local broadcast stations off ClearQAM next month. By the time MythTV rolls out CableCard support online streaming providers will have made it obsolete.

*shakes tiny fist at comcast*

Re:Hurray for HD Hauppauge Support!

[jedidiah]

The HD-PVR drivers have been solid for months now.

I'm waiting for...

[w0mprat]

I'm waiting for 1.0

Release Notes

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.22

MythTV
New Features

* MythTV UI ported to new MythUI library with all new capabilities
* Added Automatic Prioritization to the scheduler which uses watching behavior to automatically increase priority of shows that are watched close to their recording timeslot over shows that are delayed for longer periods of time. See [16477] for details until the wiki page is populated.
* Added MPEG-2 support for ConvertX/GO7007 tuners in addition to the existing MPEG-4 support. [16538]
* Added new jump point for taking a screenshot and corresponding UPnP web method. [16532]. Network control also has this jumppoint [16613]
* Improved theme caching speed after a "make install" for users who update frequently. [16487]
* Added support for overriding the audio sampling rate in recording profiles on a per card basis. [16747]
* Support for the Hauppauge HD-PVR Component Video Recorder
* Vastly improved channel scanner
* Fanart, Banner, and coverart support in Watch Recordings
* VDPAU Video renderer and decoder for hardware accelerated playback of H.264, MPEG-1/2, WMV, and VC-1.
* Many software deinterlacers are now multithreaded
* New codec and container support from up-to-date ffmpeg libraries.
* Add support for DVB-S2 [21318]
* HDHomeRun multirec support
* Additional Myth Protocol socket functions, including file upload, deletion, and scanning of storage groups. [19979] [21134] [21156]
* Adds a popup dialog accessible from the main menu using MENU which allows the system to be shutdown or rebooted [20852]

EIT

* Fixed encoding for various french Astra 19.2E channels. [16792]
* Various Freesat EIT fixups
* UK EIT fixup - Adds handling of AD, S, SL and W tags in EIT data [20768]
* Fixed matching of programs for updating EIT data

Firewire

* Add Firewire Vendor & Model ID's for PACE STBs [17149]
* Add Motorola DCH-3200 vendor ID
* Add DCT6200 vendor ID
* Add firewire and channel changing support for the DCX3200 model STB [21514]

UPNP

* More exhaustive MIME test [17155]

Setup

* Allows input groups to work properly when each recorder has more than one input and so can be in multiple mutually exclusive input groups. [17172]
* Add commandline scanner [17175] plus many more changesets
* Adds option to mythtv-setup to disable automatic database backup before database upgrades [17479] (ensure you do a manual backup before upgrade if this is enabled)
* Add HD-PVR support [17493]
* Add support for multiple frontends per DVB adaptor [17832]
* Add scanning support for DVB-S2 [21317], [21318]
* Add a spinbox for specifying a value for the "LiveTV Idle Timeout" setting [21378]
* Channel scanner - add option to set off air channels invisble [21691]
* Channel scanner - Allow basic channel scanning with DVB version of HDHomeRun [21858]
* Offer to automatically shutdown backend at start

Re:Release Notes

[Anonymous Coward]

They missed this one:

  * The install process still sucks ass and the documentation is no help whatsoever

Re:Release Notes

[Tolkien]

MythPhone removed? Why would it ever exist? How does it work? Do you speak into the tv speakers or something?

Re:Release Notes

[Abcd1234]

Put camera on TV. Put mic in room somewhere. Use TV as display. Voila, video phone in your livingroom. That was the idea.

The HD-PVR hardware is plauged with problems

[Anonymous Coward]

The HD Fury2 + HD-PVR is a beautiful setup when it works, but the HD-PVR's hardware is an unreliable piece of junk.

Leave it running for a few days, (or hours,) recording high-def channels and if the HD-PVR doesn't lock up it'll start recording quarter of the picture. It's the same experience with two different revisions of the hardware, multiple versions of the driver, and with the HD-PVR sitting on a cooling fan. If you have any doubt about it's unprecedented level of crappiness check out NewEgg's reviews of it.

Agreed - Just Being Honest

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope it's not considered "flamebait" to have some constructive criticism and color commentary of how various software projects are going. Well, let's find out, as I try to explain what has historically awaited the mythtv user.

MythTV has basically been a trick on people who wanted a DVR. It has great screenshots, a wonderful feature list, and when started, it sometimes even _appears_ to work. Then you try to use it. Hilarious really.

The myth developer inner circle (Isaac, etc) spent several years and could not get MPEGs (from TV or DVDs) playing reliably. Of course, they would never dream of reusing any of the mountains of code that do this correctly already. Perhaps this was not considered important in a DVR. To make their UI, they stitched together a flickery, non-responsive interface in qt, complete with the world's most painful and buggy music player, and a metadata management interface designed to conceal from the novice that perl scripts and SQL commands are going to be part of your life. For extra fun, and to fill out the feature list, their little potemkin village includes things like a DVD ripper and a netflix queue management front-end. If you are in the mood for laughs, try using one of these for their intended function.

Yes, in this release they finally refactored some of that in late 2009 - honing the trick even further. Since by now their reputation precedes them, they need to make bizarre failures, crashes, and pathetic video performance issues slightly less frequent and more subtle. Throw in a few more bits of unreliable graphical flair, just to lure a few more suckers. Don't worry - you will still come to your mythbuntu machine and find it displaying yesterday's date - once again proving the on-screen clock to be the most reliable part of the system - for determining when you crashed.

It's actually quite understandable why their code would be a complete wreck for so many years on end - they had to devote all their energy to a scheme to charge myth users for TV schedule information. Priorities.

Not that any of these problems were noticed much, since over the past few years, most of the underlying drivers for both video capture and display have been in such a pathetic state that, should someone insist that Linux is stable or performant, you simply assign them the task of using it to record and play back television - with hilarious results.

Oh yes, "it's better now" - with the bar as low as it was, this is not really a very meaningful statement. :)

Thinking of making a linux DVR with mythtv? Run, run for the hills.

Re:Agreed - Just Being Honest

[jedidiah]

Total nonsense. Even in earlier versions, MythTV had no problems getting MPEG from TV cards to decode reliably.

The non-XBMC-esque attitude towards external Video content is a bit annoying though.

Re:Too bad Linux is for faggots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Balmer, quit kidding around. Don't you have work to do?

You missunderstood the title, he loves Linux he just wishes it appealed to a wider audience than just his circle of friends.

Re:Too bad Linux is for faggots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or chairs to throw :-P

Bulletproof appliance

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it, but I keep giving MythTV a try and I still hate it. I've also tried KnoppMyth and Mythbuntu and they are no solution. I use GBPVR. It strips out commercials, lets me create plug-ins, never crashes or has problems, and takes me a few minutes to set up even with network clients and custom remote control mappings. It's not open source, but it sure does work. I will try MythTV 0.22, but I doubt it will live up to my expectations. And yes I have tried Sage and I don't like it at all.

Re:Too bad Linux is for faggots.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics... Even if you win, you're still retarded."

Busters

[Tablizer]

Yay, now I can watch Myth Busters 24/7! It'll be my fav cable channel.
   

Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the so-called programmers that are the world class assholes.

The users are simply idiots, be it Linux, OS/X, Windows or _______.

I'm a Linux user and a Linux programmer, so that makes me a world class idiotic asshole.

Thanks for the fish, bitches.

Too little, too late

[supachupa]

I've used Myth for years. Since the 2.4 kernel days when you had to recompile the kernel to get DVB and ALSA working. It used to take hours and hours to get even the remote control working, but I perservered because it was far superior to anything out there.

But Myth has lagged too long and it has always looked godawful compared to its competors.

With the release of Windows 7, I have found that I am able to do all that I need and it looks a hell of a lot better. This latest release of Myth (which is pretty lame for taking so long for such a minor release) only convinces me further that I made the right choice of switching away from it.

Thanks for the memories, though. I'll think of you fondly.

Re:Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

You are comparing an operating system to a PVR? That really doesn't make any sense. Also FWIW most DVB drivers are included in the mainline kernel now - most I've had to do is download a firmware file, depending on your hardware you might not need to do even that. And all I had to do with .asoundrc regarding ALSA configuration is to use optical out by default, when using analog audio no configuration was needed. I'm not saying the experience is always smooth, but it certainly has improved since 2.4 days.

Re:Too little, too late

[shutdown -p now]

I suspect he meant Windows Media Center version that comes with Win7.

How version numbers work

[KingSkippus]

And this isn't even worth a .1 version increment. It's a .01

If they're recording their version numbers like most software does, the move from 0.21 to 0.22 is what you're calling a ".1" release.

Version numbers aren't meant to be like normal decimal numbers. The stuff the the right of the decimal point is the integral minor release number. Going from 0.21 to 0.22 means an increment of one minor version, not a "hundredth" of a major version release.* There's no such thing as a ".01 release."

In other words, the jump from 0.21 to 0.22 is the same "amount" of version increase as the jump from 0.1 to 0.2. if you're at version 4.9 of something and you push out a minor release, its version will be 4.10, not 5.0, which would indicate a major release. Likewise, version 4.1 of software is most emphatically not the same thing as version 4.10.

It's also why a lot of version numbers have multiple decimal points, such as 4.9.1326. (The 1326 in this case is likely a build or other sub-minor revision number.) Obviously, if you're trying to interpret that as some kind of fraction between 4 and 5, it's meaningless.

* Just to satisfy the pedants, there are some exceptions. Some software with lots of minor revision milestones number early minor revisions x.01, x.02, etc. Also, some software uses a version numbering scheme in which odd numbers are development versions and even numbers are stable versions, so for example, x.14 would be a stable release and x.15 would be the next development release. And some developers give their software stupid-ass meaningless version names instead, such as "Millennium Edition," "XP," and "Vista," so that you really have no idea what the hell you're running outside of a general four-year or so time window.

To my knowledge, none of these schemes apply to MythTV, thank god.

Re:Not important

[Anarchduke]

Rule 34 in action

TV is shit

[Colin Smith]

Why on earth would you bother?

I could see the point if the software could pick out quality from the shit, but it can't.

Now, add some bayesian filtering on actors, director, producer, show description, category and you may have something useful.

 

Re:TV is shit

[cowbutt]

It may not have intelligent filtering, but MythTV's ability to easily schedule recordings using an EPG makes it trivial to speculatively record things that if one had to use discrete appliances one might not bother setting to record.

It's true that I'm watching more TV since I've had my MythTV box, but I'm pretty sure the quality of the TV I'm watching has improved. For a start, I've virtually eliminated my old habit of channel-surfing through hours and hours of the reality TV pap that's shown in peak hours and replaced it with watching movies, documentaries and quality comedy instead.

Re:Too bad Linux is for faggots.

[petrus4]

I don't see the correlation, personally.

Linux and anarcho-communism? Maybe.

Linux and Stallmanite mind control? Most of the time, (though not always) yes.

Linux and homosexuality, though? No.

Fuck that!

[thijsh]

Recording transmitted content has been a much used fair use right since the invention of the tape deck... And since then the industry has complained about, and tried to take away that right by imposing limits on each new technology that does basically the same.

It's basically a fancy VCR! There is nothing wrong or illegal with it... what is worrying though is that geeks are actually scared of exercising their rights, and are scared of legal repercussions by companies that are taking away your rights.

Why is it that when it comes to media people are scared to stand up for their rights, but when someone tries to 'limit free speech' all hell breaks loose... It's both a right, as is the right to be safe from unwarranted legal action that will bankrupt you whether you're right legally and/or morally.

Re:Fuck that!

[pbhj]

It's not legal in the UK to record TV transmissions except for single use timeshifting. Once you've viewed the material keeping it is strictly speaking a copyright infringement.

Re:Fuck that!

[thijsh]

Is that even true for non-movie-industry content? It would seem very strange to disallow recording the public television BBC for instance since the programming is payed for by taxpayer money.

Re:Fuck that!

[pbhj]

You're right it is strange. Most of the BBC programs aren't owned outright they are licensed. The BBC people seem to be on to a scam, none of them work direct for the BBC, even for long running shows like Gardeners Question Time (radio4), but work for their own production companies who are contracted to the BBC. Thus the BBC only have limited license on the work - that's why the back catalogue on iPlayer couldn't possibly include all past shows. It's just like when they show feature films (movies) they don't make it to iPlayer as the extra rights to put it on there would be too costly.

Re:Too bad Linux is for faggots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah the OP was so inventive in comparison.

General rule manual fixes

[KlaymenDK]

Why oh why is it so hard to include an automatic URL converter into slashcode, at least for links in the summaries?

You'd think that, since slashcode can intelligently decide to show the domain in brackets, that it could also apply that nyud suffix...

General rule > manual fixes

[KlaymenDK]

...bad preview, I meant "General rule > manual fixes"...

Brightness knob

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness," but that doesn't work. ~Author Unknown

Re:Not important

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too: Woooossshhh!!!

Databases incompatible

[Anonymous Coward]

People might be interested to know the Mythtv 0.22 database is incompatible with 0.21. I noticed this when trying to hook up a frontend on Karmic to a backend on Jaunty, both machines using the packages from the repositories. Given the well-documented issues going from Jaunty to Karmic, I did not want to upgrade the backend, so I did the following on the Karmic client:

- Install frontend 0.22 and dependencies
- Remove all packages that have 'mythtv' in their name (3 in total)
- Installed Jaunty .debs from Launchpad in their place (you will need to satisfy one additional dependency) and locked their version in Synaptic.

Beats manually installing all dependencies for the Jaunty packages (I could not find a repo).

Boxee is great!

[blahbooboo]

I am new to the HTPC world. I tried XBMC and Boxee. I found XBMC user interface design confusing to configure it and get it actually working. Boxee (yes it's based on XBMC) automatically did everything for me like an appliance. XBMC i couldn't even get the darn thing to scrape properly, the configuration is confusing (haha, that wiki instruction is a joke) , and nothing just worked as easily in Boxee. In 10 minutes I figured out in Boxee how to setup the directories, and it did all the rest (all the video art etc was setup and categorized movies vs tv shows for me). Xbmc, I wish I could have even got that far. Now I am sure XMBC is great, so please point me to some idiot setup process instructions, but XBMC feels like work to get it working...boxee not at all.

Mythbuntu Control Centre

[Anonymous Coward]

Before setting up mythtv I bought a book about it and it looked pretty complicated. Apparently, after the book was published, the Mythbuntu people released Mythbuntu Control Centre, which really makes it a lot easier to set up. And myth runs pretty well for me - had a MYSQL table that needed to get fixed this weekend, but that's pretty rare. The frontend on my Mac has its fair share of quirks, but the backend runs smoothly and solidly.

2(anecdote)=data ?

[Gothmolly]

Knoppmyth works perfectly for me - I have 3 tuners, a 1TB RAID array, Schedules Direct, and I also stream it to a frontend running on my Mac.

There's a billion fora out there about Mythtv - basically, use supported hardware, and you are fine.

Re:Not important

[Rockoon]

Lactating mammary does not go woosh.

Re:Not important

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny you cite the 'roots of slashdot' in your criticism of the GP and then complain that slashdot doesn't address feminist issues.

I'm going out on a limb and saying pretty much no women were involved in the 'roots of slashdot'. Sure women are involved now and have been for years (Rob even married one!) but me thinks when it was created, women weren't exactly in abundance...

MythTV is great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really get all the comments below.
I've never had a problem with MythTV, besides some UTF-8 issues.

The only problems I've had, were due to drivers and/or documentation of the hardware. (Which kernel modules do I need?, what chipset does my tuner card use?, etc...)
MythTV itself has been running fairly well for the last 6 years in my household.

Yes, even the significant other uses it with delight. (We don't have a normal TV.)
So, if it works, don't try to fix it. ;-)

I use a frontend/backend system, where the backend shuts itself down when not in use for powersaving.
I have digital satellite, so basically mpeg2 and H.264 streams are received and saved to disk.
A small 30W Epia box is enough for my backend, and a Zotac ION system my frontend.
HDTV for not a lot of power.

The only downside is the availability of TV guide data.
There were some semi-legal options, but now I'm stuck with mc2xml, which gets its data from Microsoft, and boy this data sucks in comparision with what I had...

Re:MythTV is great!

[Chapter80]

I've been using Schedules Direct successfully ever since it came out.

Have you tried it?

Perfect on a Mac Mini (+link to howto)

[GlobalEcho]

I set up an SVN snapshot of Myth on a Mac Mini about six months ago. I wanted to save power, so the Mini runs both the backend and the frontend. If you like, you can see a full description of how I did it. (The guide is out of date in the sense that I resolved jumpy playback issues by reducing the priority of commercial-flagging jobs.)

It's been wonderful. I get full HD video and convenient scheduling. I've had exactly zero crashes, and the automatic commercial skipping has been very reliable (maybe one mistake every 5 or 10 shows). I also really enjoy the ability to watch TV on any computer in the house.

Right now, I'm working here and there on integration with Plex because I'd like to have all media in just one interface.

Re:Not important

[Gilmoure]

Sploosh?

Upgraded months ago

[mnbjhguyt]

after four years of mythtv a few months ago I upgraded to VDR (http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Main_Page)

I always avoided it since I wanted the 'noisy backend in basement' and 'silent frontend in living room' separation, and I thought it was exclusive to mythtv. In reality, vdr handles it much better and on lower hardware specs.

and for all of the non-tv features, xbmc takes care of them very nicely.

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Configuration: easy in some circumstances

[GlobalEcho]

My experience with configuring Myth was that it was very difficult to do on my Mac Pro (due to a bug in Myth that I think is now fixed). But setting up Mythbuntu (both frontend and backend) on my laptop literally took me only about 15 minutes! If you go with KnoppMyth or Mythbuntu, you can expect a pretty painless configuration process, just by accepting defaults for all but a few obvious screens.

Granted, this was using "easy" hardware in the form of an HDHomeRun, so I had no video capture card to configure. And my experience on the Mac Pro demonstrated to me that if you don't use a dedicated Linux distro, you will have to spend some serious time and effort.

Eventually, I put everything on a Mac Mini (running OSX Leopard) which has been working very nicely.

Re:Configuration: easy in some circumstances

[jedidiah]

The most difficult parts of MythTV setup for me have always been the hardware bits. Within
the 3 years that I have been using it, those nasty hardware bits have been smoothed over by
MythBuntu and Ubuntu. I have always run "recommended hardware". I try not to be the canary
in the coal mine. If I personally see something doesn't work well (like ATI video) then I
drop it and permanently avoid it. Complaining that the hammer hurts when you hit your hand
with it really isn't productive.

What I have seen of MCE, XBMC or FrontRow has never made me want to defect.

MediaPortal

[jbeaupre]

If you're happy with XBMC, don't switch. But MediaPortal has grown into a nice alternative. Stable enough to make the wife and kids happy. http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

For those thinking of setting up an HTPC, it's worth checking out as a possible option.

Sling Support

[hicks107]

Does anybody know if there is any improvement to a slingbox style live tv over web feature? That would be cool.

rtfm

[viralMeme]

MythTV installation

Re:What did you expect?

[jedidiah]

Does MCE have HD-PVR support yet? Or proper HDHomeRun support for that matter? ...and there's nothing "free" about cable.

Re:Not important

[jedidiah]

...except this "yet another open source project release" has support for some interesting bits of hardware. These are the sorts of interesting bits of hardware that Lemming Trolls like to claim has poor Linux support.

That stupid web comic about Flash comes to mind.

Playing Blu-Ray Discs

[sshirley]

Now has MythTV or Linux in general gotten better at playing Blu-Ray discs? That's really what holding me back from giving 0.22 a try (I use Win 7 Media Center now having switched from MythTV over a year ago). I really hate the idea of copying a BD to HD in order to play it. Plus VDPAU sounds great, but it is really only for NVIDA cards? I'm happy with my ATI Radeon HD. Where's the love for ATI?

Re:Playing Blu-Ray Discs

[shutdown -p now]

Last I checked, BluRay DRM wasn't fully broken yet (we've got a few specific keys, but that's it). Until then, I don't see how any FOSS software can play it.

A commercial BluRay player or, say, GStreamer codec for Linux is a possibility, I guess, but I haven't heard of anyone doing that.

Hell Yes

[Sloppy]

Not trying to create flamebait, But honestly does anyone still use it.

Hell yes. Mythbackend, at least, is damn useful software. Reliable so far too; I dunno what you mean about it dying.

mythfrontend really needs to lose some of the artificial distinction between "recordings" vs "videos" and present them in a single unified UI, though. 0.22 got a little better, but there's still a long way to go.

And yet, mythfrontend is still the best front end. I tried XBMC but it was both hacky (had to access everything through some weirdo scripts menu every time) and only knew how to play back, without any PVR-specific controls like delete this, look at upcoming schedule, etc.

The SWMBO's loving it. In fact, I can't even switch from Mythbuntu to Mythdora to see if its wireless networking sucks less, because she won't allow me the downtime. I'm going to have to test/experiment on a separate machine, because my experimental honey-let's-not-get-addicted-to-this-yet prototype is already indespensible. :-/

Re:Hell Yes

[zenyu]

mythfrontend really needs to lose some of the artificial distinction between "recordings" vs "videos" and present them in a single unified UI, though. 0.22 got a little better, but there's still a long way to go.

Internally things are a closer now, the MythVideo plugin and MythTV proper share the same in core data structure for videos/recordings and MythVideo can now use "recording" groups and there are plans to unify the database structure for 0.23. The actual unification of the UI is not scheduled yet, but from all the developer chatter I've seen every one of the devs wants to bring the functionality of MythVideo into the frontend itself.

I found Cablecard drivers

[Sloppy]

I remember the SD days when I could just plug analog cable into any device and it Just Worked. I paid them money, month after month. I grumbled that they kept raising the price, but it all worked so conveniently well, that I kept doing it for many years.

That's the minimum standard of functionality. That's what I had, the burden isn't on me to make their stuff work to at least 1980s tech levels, and the customer is always right.

Get back to me when someone releases CableCard drivers for Linux.

Until I can plug digital cable into my unencrypted QAM tuner and have it Just Work, here are the cable TV drivers that I use, and they work nearly as well as the old stuff.

You can wave money in their face, but you can't make them accept it. I don't know why they don't want money, but I'll respect their wishes until they re-open for business. I wish everyone else would do the same.

Re:I found Cablecard drivers

[c6gunner]

That's the minimum standard of functionality. That's what I had, the burden isn't on me to make their stuff work to at least 1980s tech levels, and the customer is always right.

No, the customers are always right. You, as an individual customer, are more of a nuisance than an asset. Call them for support some time, and you'll see just how much they care about you.

The sad fact is that most people will happily continue to shell out more and more money for the honour of having their service further and further restricted. Worse yet, the cable/satellite companies are fully aware of this, and are more than happy to take advantage of it. Their attitudes won't change without a mass movement involving the majority of the public (and no, not just a 1 hour boycott which gets abandoned as soon as the new Survivor episode airs). If you think that you can organize such a boycott, I'll gladly sign up since I've already abandoned TV. On the other hand, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll fail miserably.

uh yeah... why waste your time

[NightEyez]

For $50 you can purchase SageTV or BeyondTV, works straight out of the box, no fiddling with a hundred settings to make the hardware work. I'm surprised anyone still cares about MythTV other than it was the first homebrew PVR app to get the ball rolling. RIP MythTV, thanks for the gift :)

what the world needs ...

[nblender]

I've been using myth practically forever... I have a sizable mythbackend downstairs hooked up to two cable boxes on firewire and Myth fails fairly regularly with a bug that's filed and that I've tried fixing to no avail... I also have 2 frontends which are Mac Mini's running Ubuntu... I call myself an experienced mythtv user. The problem is, MythTV does a lot of things fairly well, but nothing really awesome... The thing it does best, in my opinion, is recording, scheduling, commercial flagging and other DVR sort of functions. As a frontend, it's doomed... Other things are better. Unfortunately, there's no happy-go-lucky streaming protocol so you can use non-MythTV Frontends on a MythTV backend.. Sure, you can buy uPNP boxes to view video, but then you can't take advantage of commercial skip. If someone extended uPNP so you could stream recordings and do commercial skip, we wouldn't have to use mythtv's frontend and mythtv.org could concentrate on making a bitchin DVR.