MythTV 0.23 Released

An anonymous reader writes "After six months of our new accelerated development schedule, MythTV 0.23 is now available. MythTV 0.23 brings a new event system, brand new Python bindings, the beta MythNetvision Internet video plugin, new audio code and surround sound upmixer, several new themes (Arclight and Childish), a greatly improved H.264 decoder, and fixes for analog scanning, among many others. Work towards MythTV 0.24 is in full swing, and has be progressing very well for the last several months. If all goes according to plan, MythTV 0.24 will bring a new MythUI OSD, a nearly rewritten audio subsystem capable of handling 24- and 32-bit audio and up to 8 channels of output, Blu-ray disc and disc structure playback, and various other performance, usability, and flexibility improvements."

Comments

worth upgrading?

[metageek]

Good, I may be tempted to upgrade from 0.21 to 0.23, but will let others test this first... I did not upgrade to 0.22 because it is too much trouble and let's not break a system that kinda-of works :)

Re:worth upgrading?

[JackieBrown]

If I had a cable provider that actually let me record the cable out (I have time warner and an apartment complex that has just started including time warner cable as part of our "utilities" that we are required to pay $40 a month for,) I would have jumped on mythtv a long time ago. Guess I am stuck with downloading for current shows on my media library.

It is really a neat project.

Sort of related (but still useless to me,) but xbmc is going to support pvr within the coming months (unless they dropped that from their milestone.)

Re:worth upgrading?

[legoburner]

IIRC, XMBC is only doing a dedicated, purpose built front end for PVRs. You'll still need mythtv on the backend.

Re:worth upgrading?

[ladybugfi]

Two weeks ago I was running Mythbuntu 9.04 with MythTV 0.21. I upgraded first to 9.10 with myth 0.22 and then immediately to 10.04 with myth 0.23.

I was very surprised how smoothly the upgrade process went. All I had to do after the upgrades were to fix DVD udev rules and reconfigure the 5.1 audio. Nothing got majorly broken.

That said, I'm having some LiveTV stability issues with 0.23, which nobody else seems to be experiencing. I also had an issue with DVD mount crashing the mythtv frontend but that has now been fixed in the daily auto-builds.

Re:worth upgrading?

[Nesman64]

I must admit that I'm scared to upgrade. MythTV has a fairly high WAF, when it behaves (which is most of the time). It took me quite a while to get the machine to do everything we expect out of a TV while training myself and the wife to use it.
"How do I exit? I thought it was Esc."
"No, that's in the TV and Recording view. This is a video. I had to set it for Q"

Re:worth upgrading?

[0100010001010011]

False. They're adding backend support in the latest SVN which has been in the process of merging for a while.

I use the distributed backend methodology. I let someone else on the internet record it for me, and then I get it from them.

Re:worth upgrading?

[Anonymous Coward]

False. They're adding backend support in the latest SVN which has been in the process of merging for a while.

I use the distributed backend methodology. I let someone else on the internet record it for me, and then I get it from them.

False. They are adding *support for PVR backends*, not their own PVR backend.

Re:worth upgrading?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how people are so comfortable proclaiming to the world through a registered account that they steal content.

Re:worth upgrading?

[Dan667]

LiveTV is a feature of MythTV, but if you are using in it, IMHO you are doing it wrong.

Re:worth upgrading?

[Kymermosst]

I upgraded to 0.22 with no issues. Last weekend I upgraded to the latest 0.23 release candidate... again with no issues.

Of course, now that 0.23 is officially out, I guess I get to upgrade to it...

Re:worth upgrading?

[cayenne8]

"If I had a cable provider that actually let me record the cable out (I have time warner and an apartment complex that has just started including time warner cable as part of our "utilities" that we are required to pay $40 a month for,) I would have jumped on mythtv a long time ago. Guess I am stuck with downloading for current shows on my media library."

Not sure what is preventing you?

I plug my mythtv box into Cox cable...I use the Haupauge PRV cards for all the analog channels (full extended basic), and my HDHomerun scans the cable for any and all unencrypted HD content, and I have an external HD antenna for OTA stuff.

There shouldn't be anything for TW preventing that....I get all my 'free' content that way...and can suplement any pay stations you might want stuff from (HBO, etc). I find I just don't watch enough pay channel table stuff to warrant having it all.

Re:worth upgrading?

[Enigma2175]

I must admit that I'm scared to upgrade. MythTV has a fairly high WAF, when it behaves (which is most of the time). It took me quite a while to get the machine to do everything we expect out of a TV while training myself and the wife to use it.
"How do I exit? I thought it was Esc."
"No, that's in the TV and Recording view. This is a video. I had to set it for Q"

Hmmm, there should be no reason you can't have the same key exit in videos. Either you are using the internal player which has the same controls as recording or you configure whatever key you have assigned to "Esc" in myth to "Q" in your external app in your .lircrc.

Re:worth upgrading?

[JackieBrown]

I'd rather record which I used to be able to do on VCRs.

I really don't get why they encrypt everything since it is already on the web (and usually within an hour of the show - and three weeks early for this American Doctor Who fan.)

If they let me record, they would at least have me watch/fastford the commercials since I never watch anything live. I wouldn't be able to remove the commercials (on first run at least) without spoiling bits of the show for me since I would have to skip through the show to find the commercials.

But instead, they do not let me record. I have more hard drive space than any dvr that Time Warner could provide so I can't just keep my collection there (add to that, the interface is ugly and sorted in date order versus show order which gets annoying when you re-watch multiple shows.)

The funny thing is that when I could record shows, I would go out and buy the show on VHS or DVD afterwords that way I would have the pretty casing and the commercial free content. I never would have had a reason to look online if they wouldn't had been so controlling.

so to summarize ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that mean, in layman's term? Does it look better?

Re:so to summarize ...

[colinnwn]

Not unless you use a new theme, but it does work better. Though I had a lot of problems in the upgrade from MythBuntu 9.10 to MythBuntu 10.04. Don't know if that was Ubuntu or Myth.

Re:so to summarize ...

[Stuarticus]

if you don't mind me asking, what were the problems? I'm kind of on the cusp myself, and not too sure if I should go ahead given I have a working installation ATM... Stuart

Re:so to summarize ...

[colinnwn]

It's a calculated risk.

Several people on the MythBuntu forum claim to have had no problem with the latest upgrade, but several like me have had problems. I checked again the other day, and I've upgraded from 8.04 through 8.10/9.04/9.10/10.04, and this is the first time I've had significant problems. Others that haven't had problems probably haven't bothered checking the forum or posting, so the visible problem rate has the issue of self-selection.

If you have the ability, I'd suggest cloning your drive (not necessary to clone the recordings folder, just the MythBuntu install) or at least back up your database before upgrade. Going from 9.10 to 10.04 upgrades Myth from 0.22 to 0.23 database schema unless you enabled 0.23 auto-builds in 9.10 already. I think downgrading would be difficult. If you experience problems, you could always just reload your clone, or reinstall 9.10/0.22 and the database backup.

Here is my post on the problems I've had http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9287139

Lemme know if you have other questions.

Grow some gonads

[Luke has no name]

Man up and call a version 1.0! The new 'hip' thing to do, having version 0.x so you can excuse bugs as "Oh, it's just a beta" is bull mess.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we need to follow some arbitrary numbering scheme? Is the MythTV marketing department looking for ways to get people to purchase a new version?

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's starting to become the classic passive-aggressive "tactic" for open source products to avoid any kind of responsibility. Also, it makes them look unprofessional. All these changes, and all they did was increase minor? X.y.z versioning has a well-defined meaning and is used by lots of other open source products, including commercial. Use it! Not only should it make it easier for you to make a proper roadmap, release quick fix releases and so on, but it also makes it easier for users like me to understand in rough terms what it means to upgrade to a new release. If you need a role model, just look at Apache.

Re:Grow some gonads

[managementboy]

Does it really matter to you that much what number the version has? The versioning in MythTV is just a rolling number stating a stable release. It does not state that it is beta or unstable or anything else. If it makes you happy call it 9.10 or 1.0 for all it matters.

0.23 = Stable version as of 10th of May 2010.
0.23-fixes = Stable version + all backported fixes as of the moment you download the code from svn.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the MythTV "marketing department" is looking for ways to get people to use their product, otherwise they wouldn't be releasing at all and instead simply point to their code repository. And part of having a sensible versioning scheme is to make users understand what it means to upgrade to a new release.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop whining and buy Microsoft Mediacenter then

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

Like I said, "classic passive-aggressive "tactic" for open source products to avoid any kind of responsibility". If you dare to give any kind of criticism at all, this is how you are treated. It's always "shut up or help", let's all ignore our actual users who are just trying to make it just a little bit easier for themselves.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

The key word is "puuchasing". They are not asking users to pay for the product.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Jurily]

Why do we need to follow some arbitrary numbering scheme?

Because it allows major rewrites to be marked as such, allowing you to stick with the stable branch? Just look at KDE 3.5 and KDE 4.0.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

It is only a unique identifier, nothing more.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Ginger Unicorn]

That's an interesting key word. Does it has something to do with chasing poo?

Re:Grow some gonads

[managementboy]

Of course the MythTV "marketing department" is looking for ways to get people to use their product, otherwise they wouldn't be releasing at all

Well, not really. If MythTV was a closed source project you could be right. Code gets released by developers because sharing it makes other developers contribute their improvements/fixes back. To have lots of users is nice, but is not in itself the driving motivation to do releases or set a version number.

And part of having a sensible versioning scheme is to make users understand what it means to upgrade to a new release.

No, that's what release notes are for. A version numbers have so many meanings and uses, that it can't be pinned down like that. The version number you seem to suggest is something like Windows 3.1, but even Microsoft has changed that to product names like Windows 98 or Office 2003. The version number used by MythTV just reflects that the developers deem it stable for production environments AND that they will backport some fixes while developing the next version. To sum it up: 0.23 just states that the code is stable.

If you need a marketing name for this version that includes every information you might need to know, I suggest this one: "iMythTV Premium 2010 (Service Pack 0)"

Re:Grow some gonads

[Fri13]

It gets 1.0 when their to-do list is done and they achive the 1.0 point. Or would the 0.23 -> 1.0 release number grown make the code more stable and add needed features?

Re:Grow some gonads

[ampathee]

Bull "mess"? Maybe you should grow some gonads yourself and not be afraid to say "shit".

Re:Grow some gonads

[bdsesq]

0.23 is the numbering system the developers use.
If there were a marketing department this would be MythTV Revision 3.0GS+ or some other stupid name to make people buy it.
But even so the internal 0.23 attached to the build would probably stay the same.

Re:Grow some gonads

[BitZtream]

You and I have entirely different meanings for the word 'stable'

Re:Grow some gonads

[petes_PoV]

Don't be too hard on Myth TV. After all it's only some guys hobby, that's outgrown itself. If they want to keep it in a state where they can play around with the code, rather than entering the world of professional standards and expectations then that's their business. It does however raise one helluva red flag for people who want / need / expect a product that comes with proper support and can be relied on.

Re:Grow some gonads

[silanea]

[...] It's always "shut up or help", let's all ignore our actual users who are just trying to make it just a little bit easier for themselves.

So I assume you already brought this issue to the attention of the MythTV developers and received a similar response? Just asking, because I do not remember seeing anything to that effect on either the mailing list or the issue tracker.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Linker3000]

iMythTV

Re:Grow some gonads

[jedidiah]

What version number the developers choose to use is really the least important thing possible here.

Even MCE gets flack for being too complicated. So overselling expecations is probably a really stupid idea.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

You and I have entirely different meanings for the word 'stable'

Just hold your horses there, buddy.

Re:Grow some gonads

[LurkerXXX]

It's not worthy of a 1.0. The setup SUCKS. Seriously. It's a PITA to get it going. Until they have a decent installer/install-process at a minimum, this thing shouldn't be 1.0 to warn folks that 'This is not ready for general use by anyone approaching normal folks, and even geeks may get angered by the crappy install process'.

Re:Grow some gonads

[gravis777]

Actually, it does make a difference. Granted, most of the people using Myth are probably geeks who understand about point releases, but even I am skeptical of a product that is at 0.2x. That says to me its still in early development, is not ready for prime time, and the fact that MythTV has been around for, oh, roughly eight years (archive.org's oldest page is July 2002) and is still at such a low point number says to me that there is not much development going on in it. The fact that its a stable release is moot. If I were to start an operating system, it booted and simply displayed "Hello World" without crashing makes it a stable release - doesn't mean its ready for world wide use.

No, I agree with the parent. Find a release that is stable and relatively bug free, and call it 1.0 already. This staying at 0.x for 8 years simply says your project is either not organized, lacks proper development, or lacks the balls to release a product that's ready for prime-time.

Re:Grow some gonads

[minus9]

Nobody is telling you "shut up or help".

They're just telling you to shut up.

Re:Grow some gonads

[MrNemesis]

+1 Insightful. I've been using Myth since 2003 (and keeping it running using the same database from then to now is no mean feat, I can tell you - but that's the only option for people with TV recordings they don't want to delete as Myth has no way of importing random recordings). In that time the install procedure has changed from "tortuous" to merely "painfully inconvenient" - there's still alot of manual text-editing steps involved, for those of us in the UK at least, and the amount of hoops I've had to jump with for MySQL is atrocious, and anyone else who's run into the various debacles involving charset settings can attest.

I've already switched to XBMC as a frontend UI as it's superior in every way (apart from LIRC setup).

Re:Grow some gonads

[wagnerrp]

but even I am skeptical of a product that is at 0.2x. That says to me its still in early development, is not ready for prime time

If it makes you feel better, you can call it MythTV 23.0.

Re:Grow some gonads

[wagnerrp]

there's still alot of manual text-editing steps involved, for those of us in the UK at least

MythTV has no text files. The only one it uses is a couple lines to point it at the database. Any manual text editing you may need to do is an external dependency, such as LIRC or XMLTV. It's currently in the near term plans to replace the current setup with a web based one through the backend, move the external MySQL database to an embedded one, and export recordings with a portable metadata file for later import. For what its worth, the current devs don't actually want MythTV to be able to import random videos into the recordings screen. That is the purpose of MythVideo.

Re:Grow some gonads

[jedidiah]

Whether or not it's a major re-write is irrelevant. It either has a feature you want/need or not.

Some fancy numbering scheme isn't going to tell you this. You actually have to see what's in the release.

If it doesn't have something to offer you then don't upset the applecart.

Any "release" is supposed to be the stable branch. That is what a "release" is for.

Re:Grow some gonads

[apoc.famine]

I haven't tried installing it in 3 years because of this. Is this current knowledge, or a residue from that time? I ask, because if you asked me, I'd say the same. But I *know* my experience is 3 years out-of-date. Has it gotten better?

I always ran into database issues, and a laggy, unintuitive UI. When your UI doesn't make clear sense, and it lags, a wrong button push spells frustration. My setup wasn't too awful either - an old dell with a huppauge card and remote, and a radeon video card. Between those things, however, I only once or twice briefly got them all working at once. The components now sit in a box in the other room waiting for me to get around to trying again.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Bert64]

You will find that software developers/publishers of all kinds try to avoid any kind of responsibility...
In this case they're giving it you for free, so you have no real grounds for complaint if it doesn't perform as expected. There's nothing stopping you buying an appliance with mythtv or something similar already installed, and for an appliance i purchased i would expect it to do what its sold for. On the other hand, a purchased appliance is likely to be less flexible than mythtv primarily because the vendor doesn't want to support such a wide range of possible functionality.

Re:Grow some gonads

[MrNemesis]

Granted XMLTV is an external dependency, but since Myth is pretty useless without it I would have thought more work might have gone into streamlining its use - heck, even running the setup app in a window rather than fullscreen would have been a massive help in that regard.

The near term plans of which you speak are, IMHO, stuff that should have been considered years ago back when these problems first started arising en masse. And I don't see why I shouldn't be able to import mythtv recordings into the mythtv recordings (especially if they ever do come up with a metadata format), rather than have to use mythvideo.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Minwee]

Like I said, "classic passive-aggressive "tactic"

And if I wanted to know more about classic passive-agressive tactics, I would go right to the expert: A guy posting anonymously on an Internet message board.

Re:Grow some gonads

[ookaze]

Actually, it does make a difference. Granted, most of the people using Myth are probably geeks who understand about point releases, but even I am skeptical of a product that is at 0.2x. That says to me its still in early development, is not ready for prime time, and the fact that MythTV has been around for, oh, roughly eight years (archive.org's oldest page is July 2002) and is still at such a low point number says to me that there is not much development going on in it. The fact that its a stable release is moot. If I were to start an operating system, it booted and simply displayed "Hello World" without crashing makes it a stable release - doesn't mean its ready for world wide use.

No, I agree with the parent. Find a release that is stable and relatively bug free, and call it 1.0 already. This staying at 0.x for 8 years simply says your project is either not organized, lacks proper development, or lacks the balls to release a product that's ready for prime-time.

All this text just to say : "I won't use it, I can't bash it without looking clueless, so I'll troll the product so that I can repel people from even trying it".
For what purpose ? God knows.
If you just need reassuring, lots of MythTV users (including me) are using it for years and it's stable, in the sense that everything I recorded years ago is still available in MythTV, despite several MythTV versions updated already (started with 0.19 through 0.22, sometimes even using SVN versions, and now I'll go to 0.23), and several disk (200 Go to 2 To) and PC (3rd mythbox) changes.

Re:Grow some gonads

[ookaze]

+1 Insightful. I've been using Myth since 2003 (and keeping it running using the same database from then to now is no mean feat, I can tell you - but that's the only option for people with TV recordings they don't want to delete as Myth has no way of importing random recordings).

This just proves that using a product for a long time doesn't mean you understand the product or are proficient with it. You clearly have no clue.
These are the same problems I read about when I started installing MythTV, and it was a breeze to install for me, and nothing was a feat about MythTV.
But then again, I'm no ordinary user.

In that time the install procedure has changed from "tortuous" to merely "painfully inconvenient" - there's still alot of manual text-editing steps involved, for those of us in the UK at least, and the amount of hoops I've had to jump with for MySQL is atrocious, and anyone else who's run into the various debacles involving charset settings can attest.

I've already switched to XBMC as a frontend UI as it's superior in every way (apart from LIRC setup).

Going on with the nonsense. Like most people that don't know what they are doing but are quick to criticize what they don't understand, you believe configuring all the parts necessary for MythTV to be of any use (disks, TV card, remote, ...) are MythTV itself, which is clearly apparent here.

I agree that MythTV setup (the true one) is far from being user friendly yet, which is a cause of MythTV being a generic product that can be put on most Linux configurations, and offer lots of architectures possibilities.
For now, using external frontends like XBMC is a sure way to lose 3/4 of MythTV features though. But if some user finds it more user friendly, why not.
Not sure it will work with 0.23 though. And sure enough, using XBMC already makes you lose most of 0.22 features.

Re:Grow some gonads

[managementboy]

I can't guess what your definition of stable is, but I can tell you mine. It's based on my experience with 0.22 and 0.23. Stable means my mythbackend service runs 24/7 and hardly ever crashes. If it ever crashes, I have a small cron script that detects it and restarts the service. Mythfrontend gets started once a day and hardly ever crashes (I don't leave it open over night).

Regardless of your or my definition, what counts for a bump in version numbering is what the developers define as stable.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

Tip for people like you: ignore the '0.' prefix on version numbers. Problem solved.

Re:Grow some gonads

[spectro]

I agree with this, mythtv has been stable enough to be called 1.0 for like 10 years.

Yes, it is still not perfect but if you compare it to some commercial epic fails such as Windows Vista...

Re:Grow some gonads

[gravis777]

No, all the text was there to say that, without a 1.0 release, you will probably not find many new users outside of the community of users you already have.

Re:Grow some gonads

[norminator]

Just so you know, 0.23 is not the same thing as 0.2.3. It's the 23rd minor release, it's not in the middle of it's 2nd minor release.

And MythTV is a hobby project for linux geeks. It likely always will be. I use it and I love it. My wife can use it, but if anything goes wrong, I have to be there to clean it up. And it may take an hour of searching internet forums to find answers.

It has been around for quite a while now, and it's not hard to set up if someone is willing to put some time and effort into it. It is not, however, a commercial-quality product ready for any joe blow to pickup at target and install on a PC. If you want that, there are other options, including Windows Media Center. That works great if you want your general purpose PC to be able to record and playback TV. If you want a dedicated appliance-type set-top box and you don't want to have to screw around with it or spend hours setting it up, get a Tivo, or a DVR from your cable or satellite company. If you want the set-top box, and you want something that you can say you put together yourself, and you want to be in control of the features available on it, spend a lot of time working with MythTV. If you're a tinkerer, you'll love it. If you're not, you'll hate it.

tl;dr: Keep the 0.xx versioning, it's a good representation of who the project is aimed at.

Re:Grow some gonads

[hitmark]

or how about just dropping the x.y fully, and just go with x+1 for each release?

first release, 1. Second release, 2. The problem with x.y is that it gives the impression that development started with a set of features planned out, and that 1.0 will be all those features implemented without any obvious bugs.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

or you could go read myth's own page on how it releases numbers.... .23 is the 23rd stable release...

Re:Grow some gonads

[Luke has no name]

Successful troll is successful.

Truly, I understand the x.y.z version scheme, and it has been discussed on Slashdot many times before.

X for major API changes and rewrites and removal of features.
Y for new features, code cleanup, and maybe a major bugfix.
Z for bugfixes and minor updates.

Following this format, Linux has a 2.X.Y scheme. MythTV has a simple iterative version scheme, where you can't really tell what was done by looking at the version number.

And yes, marketing has a bit to do with it. Having a product at 1.0 looks better than having one at 0.0.23.118-svn05102010. Shun marketing if you want, 'cause it's the hip thing to do, but do so at your peril. Really, why you're a "tool" for using marketing in open source, I don't know.

Re:Grow some gonads

[t33jster]

My experience was similar, and in the same timeframe. I was following a [THE] howto related to installing on Fedora, and got it mostly working. Then I traded in all the nerd cred I had earned & went with a prepackaged distro (MythDora, as my familiarity is with redhat/fedora).

3 years later, it's still running. The only issues I've had have been hardware related (a fan died in the power supply). WAF is so high that when that happened funds were immediately allocated to replace the PSU & get the dvr working again.

The pain of setup is having to know how to make ALL the components & drivers work. That's still available for masochists who want to set up everything from scratch, but with Mythdora & Mythbuntu available, I'll happily use that & spend the extra time with my family (or killing aliens).

Re:Grow some gonads

[chmod755]

Then you must hate Trac (http://trac.edgewall.org/) - they're only at version 0.11, so they're less than half as advanced as MythTV.

:P

Re:Grow some gonads

[Theril]

This may slide a bit off topic, but how the hell professionalism got such a good reputation? Is it some measure of quality that people who create a product must be persuaded with money to do something they wouldn't otherwise do? Maybe I do too much thinking instead of watching commercials, but for me the word professional has closer connotations to prostitution than quality.

Also MythTV along with most free software projects are done by amateurs, by definition being motivated by love to what they do, so demanding professionalism is an oxymoron.

Re:Grow some gonads

[MidnightBrewer]

It matters if you actually want the product adopted so that you can brag that it's popular and not just functional. If you fly in the face of convention and don't actually explain your reasons for doing so, then it just sounds like you're avoiding responsibility by failing to release a 1.0 product. It's not just cool because commercial companies do it, it's a logical and mathematically sound approach to doing things that's been around even before computers adopted it. Iterations should be done in whole numbers; the integer "1" indicates that it's a complete unit. "0.24" makes it appear that the developers have deep-seated insecurities about their abilities and a morbid fear of criticism.

Re:Grow some gonads

[fractoid]

Yeah, it's starting to become the classic passive-aggressive "tactic" for open source products to avoid any kind of responsibility.

Not just open source. A lot of commercial software, and especially free-beer closed-source software, stays in beta for months or years before they finally put a 1.0 on it. Hell, how long did GMail last, 5 years or something?

Re:Grow some gonads

[JWW]

Yep. 0.22 was a huge change, it should have finally been the 1.0 release and I say this having used Myth since 0.11.

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. The software would have improved dramatically if they dropped "0." and just called it Version 32. That would tell anybody that this software is really advanced. Version 32! Windows is only version 7.... It must be insanely good!

Re:Grow some gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

MythTV is perfectly useful without XMLTV, but I live in the UK where the guide data is transmitted with the digital TV signal.

And you can import random recordings. Use MythExport, export the recordings to native format, then you'll be able to import them to another MythTV instance if you wish. I started using MythTV with the 0.20 release, and I'm pretty sure this feature was there then, it was certainly in 0.21.

MERTON FROM CHATROULETTE SAYS!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is that program for homosexual java coders right?

Get a Mac and some properly made AppleTV you poor tards and stop voting Liberal Democrat in future. cunts

Security: SERIALLY. I'm going to SERIALLY fuck you up the ass like all cash strapped linux lovers right.

Re:MERTON FROM CHATROULETTE SAYS!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're supposed to mod me -1 Troll

silly faggot linux lovers with mod points!

Re:MERTON FROM CHATROULETTE SAYS!

[JackieBrown]

I don't usually waste my time with these trolls. The post is for any mods that have not read the faq and are wasting their mod points with this trash rather than on legitimate posts.

Leave it to the editors to down-mod these stupid posts since they are obvious trolls and the editors have unlimited mod points. In fact, based on the faq, I imagine how that is how we are suppose to do it.

I prefer to spend my time modding up people.

Do Editors Moderate?

The Slashdot Editors have unlimited mod points, and we have no problem using them. .....

The editors tend to find crapfloods and moderate them down: a single malicious user can post dozens of comments, which would require several users to moderate them down, but a single admin can take care of it in seconds. This tends to remove the obvious garbage from the discussion so that the general population can use their mod points to determine good. Otherwise, a few crapfloods could suck a lot of moderator points out of the system and throw things out of whack.

Re:MERTON FROM CHATROULETTE SAYS!

[Anonymous Coward]

i like your style.

Re:MERTON FROM CHATROULETTE SAYS!

[BitZtream]

Editors shouldn't moderate, considering you can only post a limited number of times per day and that your karma has an affect on the number of times.

What editors should do is ban the users doing this sort of thing rather than moderating. Its going to be one or two users in almost every case causing the flood.

Of course, thats just my two cents and I've never been involved in a discussion site as popular as slashdot, especially one catering to a bunch of geeks and nerds who LOVE to get around things they aren't supposed to be able to get around. With that in mind, every time I think about writing a message to the slashdot group about something I think sucks, I tend to sit back and shut up. They have far more experience than I.

I will say however, timothy and kdawson should be removed.

Re:MERTON FROM CHATROULETTE SAYS!

[Kjella]

I haven't counted the editors but I doubt they have enough to run a 24/7 watch on every story. Not to mention it'd be slightly below first line help desk work in fun level. I don't care much for the mod points, so I usually drop to -1 and spend 15 points blasting trolls quite quickly. I guess if you're serious about moderating, go ahead. If you tend to let them expire (as they usually would for me) then help take out some of the trash instead.

Re:MERTON FROM CHATROULETTE SAYS!

[Anonymous Coward]

blast away you cock sucking linux faggot... suck my iPad!

Re:MERTON FROM CHATROULETTE SAYS!

[Anonymous Coward]

(Score:-1, Troll)

*success* now to make (Score:+5, Informative) about iPad stories.

Significant...!

[djupedal]

And just in time for H.265/HTML5...

MythTV rant

[daid303]

MythTV is a mess. I used 0.21 for a while, and it took me quite a while to configure right, the scanning for channels crashed, backend crashed from time to time. The UI is not friendly for a media player.
I looked under the hood and quickly ran away, database is a mess, codebase is huge.

I wanted a few simple things:
-1 machine, which can record TV shows and watch them later
-Play other media files
-Have a web interface to choose what to record

MythTV with MythWeb and MythVideo should be able to do this all, but I never got the other media to work. That with the crashing backend, unfriendly configuration tool and stupid frontend UI. And it has no 'overlap in 2 shows' option, if 2 shows follow eachother on the same channel, why not save the overlapping time in both files? If the 2nd show starts early and I have watched and deleted the first show then I mis the first part of the 2nd show. Totally pissed me off.

Then I found XBMC, which does a wonderful job at playing media files. But doesn't do any recording. I already had tv_grab_nl_py for guide data, my TV tuner is a simple V4L device that gives an MPEG stream, so 1000 lines of PHP code later I had a daemon that records TV shows, a webinterface where I can select what to record. With thumb generation, reencoding. Basicly I replaced the whole of MythTV with 1000 lines of php and XBMC (in my case) which is running stable for months now.

Re:MythTV rant

[managementboy]

I suggest you try 0.23 as most of your concerns have been addressed.

Re:MythTV rant

[TenMinJoe]

It's a shame that you had a bad experience with MythTV. For the record, to provide some balance:

I have been using MythTV continually since 0.14, back in 2004. It's always been hard to get it set up in the first place, but this has improved over the years. Anyway, once it *is* set up, it's just fantastic, and I'd never settle for a lesser system (e.g. retail set-top-box) now that I'm used to the power of MythTV.

With power, comes complexity, but I think it's worth it. I love that I can tell it, e.g. "Record this show at any time, on any channel, as long as it's not an episode I've recorded before, and try to prioritise the shows that do NOT have a sign-language interpreter (but record those if it's absolutely necessary due to conflicts with other things I want to record)".

Re:MythTV rant

[Ash-Fox]

You had problems on pre-version 1 software - Is that meant to be a big surprise to us or something?

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

They were stable releases... "pre-1" on an arbitrary versioning system means nothing.

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone want a media center anyway? It's just more of the dumbing down for dummies who can't use a media player.

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you expect usability from a program, which latest version's most important improvements are "new event system" and "brand new Python bindings".

Re:MythTV rant

[daid303]

Does it record to two files if the shows overlap (due to begin/end padding)? Or does it still decide the two shows conflict, and records only one, or records both but only one partial?
Does mythweb has a record button on the shedule overview? or do I still need to go to the show page, change the state to record, save, and then go back to the shedule?
Does it play DVDs out of the box?
Does it allow me find&copy the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)
(Looks like I missed a few)

My needs just don't match with the priorities of the MythTV team. Commercial flagging doesn't work here in the netherlands, don't need repeated shows, reencoding options are tough to setup, I don't need scheduling from the frontend, I don't need multiple machines.
Basicly, MythTV is great for a power user, but is really sucks for the basic user.

Re:MythTV rant

[JayAEU]

I'd never settle for a lesser system (e.g. retail set-top-box) now that I'm used to the power of MythTV.

Clearly you've been using inferior models to arrive at your conclusion. You might want to use one of these http://www.dreambox4u.com/home/models.php as a benchmark instead. They run Linux, are fairly easy to set up and are very reliable.

Re:MythTV rant

[Ash-Fox]

I have stable releases of pre-version 1 software too, doesn't mean it's ready for conventional use.

Re:MythTV rant

[juissi]

Does it record to two files if the shows overlap (due to begin/end padding)?

Yes. You can create up to five virtual tuners per tuner card, which will solve this problem.

Does mythweb has a record button on the shedule overview?

This I don't know. I would check, but my Myth box is not connected to the Internet right now.

Does it play DVDs out of the box?

Yes, at least for me it does. (Mythbuntu 10.04)

Does it allow me find&copy the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)

Sometimes I have copied an episode or a movie straight from the Mythweb interface to some other computer.

Re:MythTV rant

[Techman83]

Did you try a purpose built distro? My experience has been quite the opposite, the only things I ever had to hack was the xorg config, which thank goodness is now not required. My distro of choice is LinHES

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. You're asserting that the arbitrary assignation of N, where N>=1, implies functionality and stability, where N

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like I'm going to buy a box that
1) has only 1 vendor in the US.
2) has so little info on their website, I can barely tell what sort of features the thing has. Commercial skip? No idea. Does it have a good program guide? No idea about that either, since the only screenshot I can find that is even remotely relevent is for the OpenEPG plugin, and what I see there is horrendous looking. Does the system support playback of mkv files? I can't find any indication of what it supports (other than MPEG-2 and h.264, which doesn't tell you much without knowing supported container and audio codecs)

Re:MythTV rant

[BitZtream]

Oh he could save himself years of pain and just buy a license to Windows 7 Media Center, the frustration of dealing with MythTV for a couple hours taught me that sometimes its well worth paying the MS tax.

Mark me as a troll but MythTV is crap.

I will say that the version number does seem to be a good match for its current state of being.

The problem is, it implement a whole bunch of stuff ... like crap. Nothing in it has any polish or completeness. Its simply a collection of source thrown together by a random collection of people on the Internet. Like most OSS projects everyone working on it does a little bit of code to get their own itch scratched and thats where it ends.

They also tend to have the developers too lazy to fix bugs submitted, instead claiming they are unfixable. Took me about 20 minutes to fix the problem after waiting months for them to decide it was unfixable. I hadn't even been running Myth for months at that point. And no, I'm enough of an asshole not to submit the patch, you get what you give and all that.

Sorry guys, but MythTV is an absolutely shitty project. The idea is great, the majority of the developers and project handlers involved are worthless.

Its a damn shame too, its really not that difficult of a task to accomplish. Its the only thing that supports network recording across multiple machines that I've seen, however having not directly tried that, I'm inclined to believe that doesn't likely work either.

Most of its problems are from the developers themselves, which are typical OSS devs. They are right. You are wrong. Doesn't matter what the topic is or why. Basically anyone who doesn't tell them they are gods among devs isn't worth their time and if what you want doesn't suit their agenda it doesn't matter.

Yes this is a rant/flame. Yes the MythTV devs pissed me off in multiple ways so I have a grudge against them. Yes, I am most certainly biased against MythTV. I didn't start that way though, when I found it I thought I found the holy grail for my TV recording needs. The following experiences turned me into an absolute hater of Myth and everyone involved with it.

Re:MythTV rant

[jedidiah]

MythTV (and other PVR/HTPC software) is what you run when an appliance just isn't good enough.

It might be a bit of a bother but the other options just aren't up to snuff at all.

If your needs are really simple, there's probably a cheaper appliance out there for you.

Re:MythTV rant

[vlm]

I suggest you try 0.23 as most of your concerns have been addressed.

Except for the hardware problem that makes his backend crash. I know its a hardware problem, not software, because I've been doing what he claims can't be done with the same software, for many years on multiple sets of hardware.

Most likely outcome is he upgrades the software on the crashy hardware, notice it still crashes, and post to slashdot again that the myth software doesn't work.

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

And it has no 'overlap in 2 shows' option

Sorry, that's HAD. My mythbox does this fine.

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it record to two files if the shows overlap (due to begin/end padding)? Or does it still decide the two shows conflict, and records only one, or records both but only one partial?

I *REALLY* think you need to get out more.

Re:MythTV rant

[vlm]

Did you try a purpose built distro? My experience has been quite the opposite,

And my experience is the opposite of yours, in that big generic distros like Debian and its downstreams like Ubuntu have a large staffing advantage in fixing the problems that develop. Also distros like Debian are install once, upgrade forever. No need to wipe the drive and restart from bare metal when upgrading like other OS, or when the purpose built distro's developers evaporate away. And better security support, important if you make the system available over the internet (remote programming, etc). And better integration with other software, such as setting up gnump3d to serve up my mythmusic directory was about a 60 second job. And better utility set, I use unison to sync my media files across all relevant machines, don't know if thats even available on a small time purpose built distro. And better choice of support programs, I use munin to monitor all my machines including the myth boxes.

Re:MythTV rant

[Ash-Fox]

Interesting. You're asserting that the arbitrary assignation of N, where N>=1, implies functionality and stability, where N

Indeed, if it were considered ready by the developers, then the developers would have made it version 1.

Re:MythTV rant

[Techman83]

LinHES is pretty much Arch Linux (previously debian, but I like the way they are doing things far better now) underneath and has quite a thriving community (It's been going since sometime in 2004). They have their own repos and a reasonable amount of packages apart from the standard myth ones. You can in theory add the arch repos to get extra stuff, but it isn't recommended and you can cause some issues if you replace the wrong thing. To note Unisen is available from the repos.

What I find with the Larger distros is that it's feels like just "Ubuntu" with the Myth packages added on top, where as LinHES in particular feels like they have really worked hard to make it "Just Work". I like to hack things and bend them to my will, LinHES allows me to do that as it has a full featured distro underneath. Personally I use SNMP/Centreon/Nagios combo for monitoring.

Re:MythTV rant

[Nesman64]

Does it allow me find&copy the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)

This, at least, is easily done through MythWeb. You can download the file from the interface page of the show you want, and it provides a reasonable file name, at least since 0.21.

Re:MythTV rant

[supermank17]

Considering that MythTV has been around for nearly a decade now... yes, it might be a surprise. Most of the problems he's referring to have been around from the very beginning, and there haven't been many signs of them improving. I know its technically a "pre 1.0" version, but it doesn't appear they have any plans to move beyond 1.0 in the next 10 years, and in the meantime they do expect it to be used by end-users.

Re:MythTV rant

[MrNemesis]

More balance :)

I've also been using it since late 2003 and whilst the setup has improved, it's still an utter pain in the arse to setup and configure. Whenever the channel setup changes, I have to manually edit my xmltv entries for the various new channels (using the EPG only provides a week of entries, as opposed to 2 weeks for RT, plus keeps mythbackend running at 30% CPU and occasionally crashing). Keeping the database and filesystem in one piece whenever you rebuild a machine or switch to another distro is needlessly manual - why can't myth have a "save my database" and "look in this directory for recordings" import , rather than me having to edit my 450MB MySQL database?

MySQL was also a bad choice - I've lost count of the time it's become corrupted, and alot of users will have also run into the problems with Myth's retarded character encoding especially during the 0.22 upgrade http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Fixing_Corrupt_Database_Encoding Why can it not use .conf files for local/client-side configuration? Why not an SQLite DB a la XBMC which, on my machines, is far, far faster than MySQL for getting crap on the screen? Postgres or DB-agnostic SQL classes would have been better in every way (and would have saved me untold hours fixing MySQL tables), but they're another topic that generates "MySQL is the best!" and endless "wontfix" flames.

Sure, Myth is pretty powerful and I've done some really cool things with it. But the overhead of setting it up and keeping it running is high, much higher than I think it warrants, and its fragility hurts the WAF. Alot of it has improved, but it's still very much a project with the mentality of an experiment rather than a serious stab at the PVR market. Lots of easily automated/GUIfied tasks left as terminal-only solutions, and not very scalable in places (try loading a collection of ~1600 movies with metadata and thumbnails and scrolling through them - XBMC can keep up with the keyboard, Myth can't). Speaking of metadata, when 0.22 came out I still couldn't find a way to get Myth to do auto-lookups of TV shows... other than using one of various metadata lookup scripts, which was when I made the switch to XBMC.

Very little spit and polish in very many key areas is one of the main reason geeks like myself get pissed off with Myth. No-one's arguing that it can do some really, really funky things, but I don't agree with your point that with great power comes great respo... complexity. Myth just has alot of needless complexity because no-one's dedicated the time to make things go smoothly.

Re:MythTV rant

[Abcd1234]

Well, to be fair, it could also be the kernel. When I had a major hard disk crash, I finally upgraded my Myth system from Fedora 5 to Ubuntu 8.10 on more modern hardware with more RAM, and performance went *down*, while the number of bugs went way up. I went from a rock solid, stable system to:

1. ivtv demonstrating really really annoying bugs, including random audio problems, and occasional tuner lockups that require a full reboot to fix.
2. I/O performance problems, such that I suddenly started seeing IOBOUND errors, where my previous system doing the same things never saw them at all (I've minimized those issues by moving my database to a different spindle, using ionice on various processes, and disabling comm flagging of more than one commercial at a time).

Of course, none of this is Myth's fault. But seriously, the number of regressions I encountered has been rather astounding, not to mention incredibly annoying. The fact taht people blame this on Myth is rather unfortunate, but I can't blame people for being scared away. Fortunately, I'm a tinkerer, and so damned addicted to Myth's functionality that I put up with the warts.

Re:MythTV rant

[daid303]

I already pointed out in another post that the hardware has been replaced (P3 -> ATOM) and the tuner is a WinTV-PVR-USB2, which runs without problems with my own scripts (and the backend also crashed when not recording)
Also, the machine runs more then just my media center (webserver, subversion repository, backup jobs) and none of those crash.

Re:MythTV rant

[daid303]

Does it record to two files if the shows overlap (due to begin/end padding)?

Yes. You can create up to five virtual tuners per tuner card, which will solve this problem.

I hope you are joking... right? That's the 'sollution'? And then people wonder why I rant that it's a configuration hell?

Does it allow me find&copy the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)

Sometimes I have copied an episode or a movie straight from the Mythweb interface to some other computer.

Must have missed the download link in mythweb. My bad.

Re:MythTV rant

[Etherized]

MythTV has its weaknesses (mostly UI related), but I'm not sure what you mean by this:

Does it record to two files if the shows overlap (due to begin/end padding)? Or does it still decide the two shows conflict, and records only one, or records both but only one partial?

The answer: it depends. MythTV will do the following: if possible, it will record each show in its entirety, with the padding requested by the user (this is configurable on a global and per-recording level). Say you have show A and show B, where show A ends at the same time that show B begins: MythTV it will do its best to preserve both shows, but it's limited by how many tuners you have. With two tuners of equal priority, MythTV will record show A on tuner 1 (including any pre/post padding) and show B on tuner 2 (also including any pre/post padding).

If you only have one tuner, then MythTV obviously can't do that (indeed, no DVR really could). What happens in this case is that MythTV "throws away" the padding in its calculations; so it records show A (but no post-padding) and immediately switches to show B (with no pre-padding). In an ideal world with good schedule data from the TV stations, that would be good enough, but shows often run over/under (which is why you have the "padding" option), so in this case you might lose a few seconds of each show (assuming A runs long and B starts early). MythTV figures that the padding is "nice to have" but, if it can't guarantee that padding, it also figures you'd rather have the show as scheduled than no show at all.

By the way, if you dig deep, most of these things can be modified. MythTV's defaults in this case do what I believe most people would want to do, but they can be extensively modified to taste.

Does mythweb has a record button on the shedule overview? or do I still need to go to the show page, change the state to record, save, and then go back to the shedule?

I don't think it has this as of .22 - it would be handy.

Does it play DVDs out of the box?

. This is distribution specific, and it's not a MythTV problem. In the United States it's illegal to play DVDs in Linux without paying for a decoder license. Many distributions give you easy ways to bypass this restriction at your own peril, and in gentoo with the appropriate use flags everything does indeed work "out of the box."

Does it allow me find&copy the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)

Mythweb allows direct download of files.

Basicly, MythTV is great for a power user, but is really sucks for the basic user.

I do agree with that sentiment. It does/can do most of what you desire, but it's not obvious due to a murky UI and rather cumbersome setup process. If you aren't interested in tinkering, it's a poor choice.

Re:MythTV rant

[TenMinJoe]

I agree that it's hard to set up. I don't agree that it's hard to keep it running.

You talk about problems when you rebuild the machine, or switch distributions, or upgrade to a new version of MythTV. It's true, those are troublesome. Try to avoid doing those things!

If you want a MythTV system that works reliably, then build a Myth box, get it into a working state, and then *stop tinkering with it*.

Obviously as geeks this is hard for us to do - the temptation to upgrade everything to the latest version is great! But, if you want it to behave like an appliance, I think you need to treat it like an appliance, and leave it alone.

Of course, it would be nice if all the upgrades worked perfectly, but my main point is that I don't think it's fair to say "the overhead of keeping it running is high", if you want to include regular software, OS, and hardware upgrades as part of "keeping it running".

Re:MythTV rant

[daid303]

MythTV has its weaknesses (mostly UI related), but I'm not sure what you mean by this:

Does it record to two files if the shows overlap (due to begin/end padding)? Or does it still decide the two shows conflict, and records only one, or records both but only one partial?

The answer: it depends. MythTV will do the following: if possible, it will record each show in its entirety, with the padding requested by the user (this is configurable on a global and per-recording level). Say you have show A and show B, where show A ends at the same time that show B begins: MythTV it will do its best to preserve both shows, but it's limited by how many tuners you have. With two tuners of equal priority, MythTV will record show A on tuner 1 (including any pre/post padding) and show B on tuner 2 (also including any pre/post padding).

If you only have one tuner, then MythTV obviously can't do that (indeed, no DVR really could). What happens in this case is that MythTV "throws away" the padding in its calculations; so it records show A (but no post-padding) and immediately switches to show B (with no pre-padding). In an ideal world with good schedule data from the TV stations, that would be good enough, but shows often run over/under (which is why you have the "padding" option), so in this case you might lose a few seconds of each show (assuming A runs long and B starts early). MythTV figures that the padding is "nice to have" but, if it can't guarantee that padding, it also figures you'd rather have the show as scheduled than no show at all.

By the way, if you dig deep, most of these things can be modified. MythTV's defaults in this case do what I believe most people would want to do, but they can be extensively modified to taste.

I forgot to add "on the same channel". What happens is, there are 3 shows that I watch that are on the same channel, and they start after each other. Due to schedules not being very accurate I have 10 minutes padding on both ends. So recording starts 10 minutes before the first show, records the first show, up till the point where the schedule ends, starts with the 2nd show in a new file, same for the 3th show, and then stops recording 10 minutes after the last show.

As I don't watch everything at once, I first watch the first show. And a few days later I want to watch the 2nd, but the first few minutes of the 2nd show are in the file of the first show (if it started early), so you need to find the first show, watch the last few minutes of that file and then continue in the other file.
Instead, my own scripts just record to two files at once during the overlap. That way I always have 1 show in 1 file, no need to search for other files, no need to preserve files because they contain a few minutes of unwatched shows.

Re:MythTV rant

[MrNemesis]

Pretty much impossible to keep the box in a consistent state - this is a Myth system with two combo backends, three dedicated frontends, and it's used by between seven and nine people. It's got recordings going all the way back, so I've had to keep upgrading from the year dot. Should I note have upgraded it, hardware or software-wise, in all that time?

The primary backend of myth is also a caretaker for the house - none of the other software on the box ever has problems when I switch to another distro or upgrade the hardware - you just drop the config files in the right place, or blow your DB back into the new tin, and you're good to go - because once something's set up I don't tinker with it - I use Linux, and especially Debian, because it's essentially a fire'n'forget option that I don't have to think about. The fact that Myth has problems with this isn't explained away by it's "appliance" nature (if I thought of Myth like an appliance I'd be alot more scathing about it - none of the other PVR programs I've used have the same issues either) since it clearly doesn't behave like one; I'm not interested in keeping a separate box for Myth (waste of money and power), it's advertised as something that can coexist with XYZ and yet has a multitude of problems that every other program neatly avoids that I'm told are created by using my computer like a computer.

Plain and simple truth IMHO is that the project is badly thought out and managed, an opinion that I came to after a) looking at the code and b) trying to deal with some of the developers. As it is I'm just using it in the absence of anything better.

Re:MythTV rant

[TenMinJoe]

Essentially I think we agree - MythTV is the best thing available, but ideally it would be even better.

Re:MythTV rant

[daid303]

I tried mythbuntu at first, but for some unknown reason that didn't install the mythtv package. So I installed normal ubuntu and mythtv on top. I'm no stranger to installing missing packages, or compiling stuff from source, creating databases, and adding startup scripts. And that's not what bothered me (I guess there are distros that set this up for you without issues)

Just... pick some random person, which computer experiance, start 'myth-setup', give him the keyboard and the mouse, and watch. The 'everything needs to be configurable with 5 buttons from a remote' UI just hurts. Mix that with many, many strange configuration options, unclear defaults and you have setup hell.

Compared to XBMC, I started it, and it worked. Only thing you needed to configure is the weather location. Everything else just works, and with 4 keys (up/down/enter/escape) sure, it doesn't do TV recording, but it does give a whole different user experience.

Re:MythTV rant

[MrNemesis]

Essentially yes - but I think you're giving it a lot more credit than it's due :) It's the relative simplicity of some of it's biggest pitfalls that make its "85% complete on the features it has" so hard to stomach.

Re:MythTV rant

[TenMinJoe]

Well, an awful lot of work by a great many people went into MythTV. I didn't do any of that work, but I still get to use MythTV for free. So, it has a lot of credit with me, just to start with!

Re:MythTV rant

[Bert64]

Have you looked at the dreambox line? They run linux, support recording and media playback and some of them have modular tuners...

Re:MythTV rant

[Jetrel]

If you want a stable & highly configurable software DVR that runs on Linux, Windows, and MacOS; you might want to take a look at SageTV. Sure it's not open-source but it has an affordable price point and is very expandable with both plugins and hardware extenders. You can run it as a standalone server or in a hub-and-spoke configuration. The default GUI leaves a lot to be desired but there are plugins (SageMC) that completely redo the GUI and make it look great!

I don't work for Sage but really enjoy how well it works!

Re:MythTV rant

[kmo]

Does it allow me find&copy the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun) .

There is a perl script shipped with myth that renames files to a human readable form and updates the myth database with the new name. I use mythrename.pl, but it has been deprecated because its default options are supposedly dangerous in favor of Mythlink.pl which I haven't used.

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it allow me find&copy the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)

MythLink will create friendly named symlinks for the recordings. You can also use MythRename (though it looks like that was killed)
Run it as part of a record job, or whenever you want to copy files.

Personally, I wrote my own perl script which runs after mythcommflag to rename the recording and run mythtranscode to drop commercials.
That way, I can view the recordings from my Windows boxen without having to skip the commercials (or use the not-so-good MythTV player).

You can use the built-in stuff, but it wasn't reliable enough for me. (OTA recordings can have corruption which cause mythtranscode to hang and/or write out multi-gigabyte log files)

Re:MythTV rant

[Nexus7]

OK, well, while we're ranting...

MythTV and XBMC, which were as of the beginning of this year, the most current/usable Linux HTPC options, seem to be focused solely on the use case of displaying on a TV. Meaning very poor mouse support. Now you'd think the easiest thing is mouse support, because environments like GNOME or KDE/Qt, already have mouse support (I mean, you don't even have to think about it). But MythTV and XBMC bend over backward to take that away. Go to the config screens in MythTV (front and back-end) and you have to use tabs, arrow keys, etc. The new MythUI was supposed to have "full mouse support", but when I last looked in February, there was a dismissive comment about it. XBMC (on a PC) has better mouse support, but forget about just using a mouse to do stuff. I mean, mouse works in Windows Media Player, right?

Easy things should be easy. Pop-in a DVD,and you should be able to go to different DVD menus, or pause, etc. without having to know the key commands, and any special work-flows. Not possible with either.

Most people have PCs. A lot have them hooked up to VGA/DVI devices (not S-Video), such as monitors, LCD TVs hooked up w/VGA, or projectors. But they're written to work well with TVs (S-Video/composite devices), not computer displays. Or HDMI, I suppose (not sure if a video card treats HDMI as a separate output like S-Video, or just as another computer display, meaning mouse is shown - since I don't have an HDMI display). Scratch your own itch, I guess. But why not write it for the obvious audience, and then aim for the set-top box type user? won't those users just use the Comcast box anyway?

Re:MythTV rant

[mtdean]

What a waste--way to fork a fork. You do realize that someone else already wrote /the/ complete MythTV replacement in only 1731 lines of Perl four years ago.

Re:MythTV rant

[wagnerrp]

Mythlink.pl is basically just mythrename.pl with the ability to rename recordings removed. Those were intentionally removed as doing so can be dangerous. External editing of the database is not preferred. Renaming a recording while it is in use elsewhere will cause problems. Renaming a recording to one with special characters may cause problems. If you just link to them rather than rename them, you completely sidestep any of these issues.

Re:MythTV rant

[Ash-Fox]

Considering that MythTV has been around for nearly a decade now

I don't see how age have to do with any of this, The developers don't consider it done/ready since it isn't version 1 yet.

in the meantime they do expect it to be used by end-users.

[citation needed]

Re:MythTV rant

[BLKMGK]

Umm, I run XBMC and have for quite some time. I do usually use a remote but when I want to use a mouse I have no issues. In fact with a new skin I'm currently using the mouse right-click is the only way I've found to update source libraries. the mouse works fine! Now, it might not work while displaying a DVD menu as I've honestly not tried it. I guess I don't understand why you want a mouse so badly.

HDMI is treated like a DVI output.A DVI output that also supports sound etc. - it's all I've ever use don my setup. I'm on those forums too so by all means ding me if I can be of help. I'm no Linux pro though but I have managed to achieve great success with XBMC. Wish I could say the same for Myth. Currently I extract from a Tivo HD with KMTTG and torrent for TV.

Re:MythTV rant

[wagnerrp]

MythTV has full mouse support within the menu. You just have to remember to go into the frontend settings and enable the mouse cursor. It will have full mouse support within the OSD during playback when the new OSD code is merged in prior to 0.24, which is expected late this fall.

Re:MythTV rant

[MidnightBrewer]

Power doesn't automatically require complexity, it just means that you may need better UI designers. This is a problem that has long plagued many open source projects.

Re:MythTV rant

[Techman83]

sure, it doesn't do TV recording, but it does give a whole different user experience.

And that's the kicker right there. Some people have trouble setting their VCR, let alone anything more complicated. I know I've prattled on about LinHES, but the defaults at least in that distro are quite sane. It comes up automatically with Mythtv-setup and all you have to do is follow the menus through (keyboard is easier, but I've done it with the remote) from top to bottom.

Re:MythTV rant

[mattack2]

The answer: it depends. MythTV will do the following: if possible, it will record each show in its entirety, with the padding requested by the user (this is configurable on a global and per-recording level). Say you have show A and show B, where show A ends at the same time that show B begins: MythTV it will do its best to preserve both shows, but it's limited by how many tuners you have. With two tuners of equal priority, MythTV will record show A on tuner 1 (including any pre/post padding) and show B on tuner 2 (also including any pre/post padding).

If you only have one tuner, then MythTV obviously can't do that (indeed, no DVR really could).

You say that it "obviously" can't do that. But there's no reason that it couldn't do that. The only assumption is that the recording quality is identical on both recordings (e.g. recording the original digital bits from a cablecard tuner, or analog recording at equal quality).

Lets say that show A has a 5 minute pad on both ends and show B has a 5 minute pad on both ends (more than most padding I actually use). There's no reason that the tuner couldn't record 7:55 - 10:05, and DUPLICATE the 8:55-9:05 content in both recordings. Whether it does that by literally duplicating the content in two separate files, or some other kind of system (effectively ref count the parts of the recording and only delete them when ref count gets to 0) is an implementation detail. (Actually duplicating is most "reasonable" so you can still have separate files to easily export and reencode for other formats.)

I honestly can't remember which one, but some people on tivocommunity have said that some 'other' (non-Tivo) PVR *can* do that. It's one of a few things that I wish Tivo would do (and would pay a one time fee for), though I now have enough tuners that it matters much less to me.

Re:MythTV rant

[meatmanek]

It may be a hardware problem, but that doesn't give MythTV an excuse to crash.
Catch the error, display a useful error message, and return control to the user gracefully.

Re:MythTV rant

[shitdrummer]

Does it record to two files if the shows overlap (due to begin/end padding)?

Yes. You can create up to five virtual tuners per tuner card, which will solve this problem.

I hope you are joking... right? That's the 'sollution'? And then people wonder why I rant that it's a configuration hell?

The virtual tuners are brilliant. You can use a single tuner card to record multiple channels off the one Digital stream. That means if you have 2 virtual tuners set up on your one physical tuner card you can record two shows one after the other with the padding you have set for each show. And if the station is broadcasting multicast stations, you can record two of those multicast stations at the same time.

This is exactly what you are asking for. There are plenty of howto's on setting up the virtual tuners.

I've run Windows MCE XP, Vista, Win7 and MythTV. It took me all of about an hour to set up MythTV the way I wanted (yes, with virtual tuners too) following the howto's. Sure I've played with linux desktops before, but I wouldn't call myself an expert by any means.

MythTV has issues (which is why I'm using Win7 now, it is really nice but I miss some of the MythTV features) but it is a work in progress. It does some things much better than the alternatives and some things worse.

If you've had so much trouble with virtual tuners, perhaps you should stay away from MythTV until version 1.0.

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Does mythweb has a record button on the shedule overview?

No. If that's a big deal, go add it - mythweb is just PHP! But you'll have to decide which of the 8-10 different record modes you want your thingy to use! (ie. record in this timeslot every week, record this show on this channel only, record this show on any channel, etc.)

Does it allow me find&copy the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)

Have a look at mythfs.py - it provides a view of your recordings in the filesystem, complete with names in a format you define. That plus a script for transcoding should do what you need.

Re:MythTV rant

[vlm]

Also, the machine runs more then just my media center (webserver, subversion repository, backup jobs) and none of those crash.

Here I am probably posting too late to be seen. Anyway.

I can't help but notice that one class of software, that being computationally non-intensive, relatively little memory access, etc, works great, and the one specific piece of software that absolutely thrashes the CPU and memory crashes... So if you hadn't replaced your hardware this is where I'd have started, run memtest86+ on that dude overnight, maybe bonnie++ to exercise the I/O the next night, see what errors are reported. Thermal / overheating problems?

I see you've replaced all the hardware but the tuner, and it still crashes, which would seem to isolate the problem to that one specific piece of hardware. Flaky USB cable? Connector? Who knows.

There has historically been USB flaky-ness in Linux. Many years ago, I had kernel crashes merely transferring lots of files on a tiny flash drive. But last week I transferred 500 gigs off a hard drive in a USB enclosure no problemo whatsoever. You can see if there is USB weirdness by a similar scheme. If you can't transfer 500 GB of video MPEG data without crashing, maybe its a kernel USB problem.. try to transfer 500 GB of any USB data to compare... Try sticking an "old" 500 GB drive in an enclosure, "dd if='whatever usb device as seen in dmesg' of=/dev/null" and see if it crashes. Run it a couple times?

I have had some success with my truly ancient PCHDTV card... A bit out of date, not sold anymore. But I only paid like $75 for it when it was brand new, back when dinos roamed the earth. Probably its great great grandchild the PCHDTV HD-5500 would work, its current hardware, and its about $100. Or sometimes "new and improved" isn't necessarily so good. I'm sure an hour with google would leave you as a very well informed buyer.

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

>

Its a damn shame too, its really not that difficult of a task to accomplish. Its the only thing that supports network recording across multiple machines that I've seen, however having not directly tried that, I'm inclined to believe that doesn't likely work either.

SageTV is capable of networked recording across multiple machines.

IMO SageTV has a far better implementation DVR/media center than MythTV. Of course, being a commercial application, it should. That said, the developers of SageTV are very anti-DRM and have managed to provide an application and excellent client devices that read every major and most minor non-DRM video and audio formats virtually flawlessly.

Re:MythTV rant

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer: it depends. MythTV will do the following: if possible, it will record each show in its entirety, with the padding requested by the user (this is configurable on a global and per-recording level). Say you have show A and show B, where show A ends at the same time that show B begins: MythTV it will do its best to preserve both shows, but it's limited by how many tuners you have. With two tuners of equal priority, MythTV will record show A on tuner 1 (including any pre/post padding) and show B on tuner 2 (also including any pre/post padding).

Does it now? I have two actual DVB tuners with 3 virtual tuners on each, despite there be free virtual tuners available on the same multiplex as a scheduled adjacent recording, MythTV would always put the two adjacent recordings on the same tuner thereby causing MythTV to ignore its padding time, so far as a workaround I have to tell MythTV to start recordings a minute early to force adjacent recordings onto different tuners. If they have fixed this issue, it would be great because my current "solution" causes conflicts when using a separate virtual tuner is not an option.

Re:MythTV rant

[daid303]

Never to late with email notification ;)

The USB hardware works fine, the CPU works fine, the memory works fine (always run memtest on new hardware) mencoder runs fine, cat /dev/video0 > file.mpg works fine for hours, mplayer /dev/video0 works fine. Compiling kernels and compiling myhttv worked fine. Only thing that crashed from time to time was the mythbackend.

Re:MythTV rant

[Dalroth]

SageTV is a buggy piece of crap as well. I ran it for a year, went back to MythTV. If I'm going to be working around stupid bugs, I might as well at least have the code available.

MythTV is really quite good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree, MythTV is a bit of a mess, but it's constantly and consistently improving, and user concerns are being addressed. It's an extremely ambitious project, and offers way more than any other media center / pvr app for any platform.

To address some of your concerns:
- I disagree that the UI is not friendly. I think it's ugly and outdated, but I wouldn't call it unfriendly especially compared to other media center apps (even XBMC).
- Last year I cancelled my cable so I don't even use MythTV to record shows anymore. I use it purely as a media player, and I simply can't replace it with XBMC as much as I've tried. I've had exactly the opposite experience of you, where for me MythTV is stable, plays every file format I've needed, and XBMC crashes all the time, and the interface is too complex for my wife -- she much prefers MythTV.
- MythTV most certainly does have an overlapping recording option. It can be set per show, per show instance, per channel, etc.

Other things you simply won't find anywhere else:
- hardware support. While MythTV's hardware support is better than most, I suspect most of your crashing problems came from using subpar hardware devices. Most myth users choose the best transcoding hardware, and the backend support is top notch for a few key recording devices. Choose one of them when building a myth box and you will have great stability
- commercial detection, and automatic commercial skipping. Not perfect, but works very well.
- really great recording profiles and guide support (I.e., it's easy to hook up one digital HDTV antenna, and then a digital cable source, and have them both with completely different channel and guide data)
- user community. #mythtv-users has always been very helpful to me.

Re:MythTV is really quite good

[daid303]

- MythTV most certainly does have an overlapping recording option. It can be set per show, per show instance, per channel, etc.

Apperently not on by default? And hidden away in the darkest corners of MythTV? or added somewhere after 0.22

- hardware support. While MythTV's hardware support is better than most, I suspect most of your crashing problems came from using subpar hardware devices. Most myth users choose the best transcoding hardware, and the backend support is top notch for a few key recording devices. Choose one of them when building a myth box and you will have great stability

WinTV-PVR-USB2 drivers support is no issue, with my own PHP script no issues, and crashes happened during recording as well as when not recording. Machine started out as a Pentium 3, but is a silent ATOM based now, crashes happened on both.
It's the most basic hardware you can find, it just outputs an MPEG2 stream. I could just "cat /dev/video0 > file.mpg" and it would store the currently tuned in channel.

- commercial detection, and automatic commercial skipping. Not perfect, but works very well.

As I pointed out in another post, doesn't work at all in the netherlands.

- really great recording profiles and guide support (I.e., it's easy to hook up one digital HDTV antenna, and then a digital cable source, and have them both with completely different channel and guide data)

College of mine has digital HDTV and he told me it was a hell to configure it with MythTV. And it sometimes seems to lose recording status of shows. He is also afraid to upgrade, as the last 3 times that he did that it broke.

Re:MythTV is really quite good

[jedidiah]

> College of mine has digital HDTV and he told me it was a hell to configure it with MythTV

Like any other PVR package, MythTV is essentially just a generic desktop application that runs full screen and tries to ignore the keyboard.

If you have a problem with an HDTV, then that's a generic problem has really has nothing to do with MythTV.

Most TV's are not setup for computer use in mind and many that are screw up important key details (like only supporting 4:3 resolutions on the VGA port). Many TVs also broadcast bogus pnp data that can be a problem for hardware that's "too trusting". OTOH, those issues are pretty unusual for the recommended hardware.

Yes, it helps to do a little research and see what the recommended gear is.

Re:MythTV is really quite good

[wagnerrp]

Apperently not on by default? And hidden away in the darkest corners of MythTV? or added somewhere after 0.22

That type of recording has been available for several years in the form of Multirec. On digital tuners, you can record however many simultaneous streams you want. There was a discussion about the form you want, where it simply duplicates the single stream coming out of the card. Because of the way the recording system is set up, those changes would not be trivial, and the developers have deemed it better to spend their time elsewhere on things they would rather use with MythTV.

As I pointed out in another post, doesn't work at all in the netherlands.

That has everything to do with the fact that the commercial flagger was programmed by someone in the US, with their style of ads. In order to work in the Netherlands, the commflagger would have to be retuned for how your ads behave, which is only going to be done by someone actually living there.

Re:MythTV is really quite good

[daid303]

Oops, my mistake, I forgot to add "satellite" in the mix there. Hooking up a TV/screen is all X, I know. No problems there. It's the satellite tuner that's hell to configure.

Re: recording cable

[colinnwn]

Do you have analog cable, or digital cable that your non-cablecard TV can tune to without a cable box? If so, MythTV can record it. Even if you have to use a cable box, MythTV can record the composite or component out on the way to the TV. There's pretty much no way a cable company can legally prevent you from recording non-encrypted, non-premium channels right now (by law that is required to include free to air TV stations). And there are ways with the cable box to record premium channels.

I'm a long term Linux user! but...

[FunkyRider]

I just made an HTPC with Win 7 media center! it's because I only choose the right one tool for me.

Re:I'm a long term Linux user! but...

[jedidiah]

> I just made an HTPC with Win 7 media center! it's because I only choose the right one tool for me.

The right tool for the job also includes supporting the latest and most interesting recording hardware.

If you are going to be a Microsoft Shill that pretends to use Linux, then at least don't push inferior Win32 solutions.

Re:I'm a long term Linux user! but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The right tool for the job also includes supporting the latest and most interesting recording hardware.

If you are going to be a Microsoft Shill that pretends to use Linux, then at least don't push inferior Win32 solutions.

"The latest and most interesting recording hardware"? You know there are plenty of tuner devices out there that have Windows support but not Linux, right? Most people don't want their recording hardware to be "interesting", they just want it to work.

Just because somebody thinks Windows is the appropriate tool for the job does not mean they're a shill. I'm more inclined to believe that you have no idea what you're talking about and are completely unaware of the state of media center software for windows -- why would somebody even be running Windows 7 on a 32-bit box?

Re:I'm a long term Linux user! but...

[segedunum]

If you'd said Media Portal then I might give that some credence. Hardware support is better on Windows, but Windows Media Center is still crap.

Re:I'm a long term Linux user! but...

[jedidiah]

> "The latest and most interesting recording hardware"? You know there are plenty of tuner devices
> out there that have Windows support but not Linux, right?

        Redundant ones.

> Most people don't want their recording hardware to be "interesting", they just want it to work.

        Well MCE fails in that department too.

        This idea that just because it's Microsoft, "it all just works magically" is a big lie.

> Just because somebody thinks Windows is the appropriate tool for the job does not mean they're a shill

        No. You're a shill because you insist on fixating on the OS Vendor product when
there are other better options. This is the whole problem with the Lemming whole mindset.
You have a platform where there are a plethora of options but you get one monopoly option
pushed at you.

        You're a shill not for pushing Windows in general but MCE in particular.

Re:I'm a long term Linux user! but...

[b0bby]

I have to say, I usually go for the Linux option all things being equal, but I too have just set up a Win 7 HTPC as my Dish Network replacement. A friend spent far too much time getting his MythTV setup to work; I bought the dual core Atom/ION Revo box, a USB ATSC tuner and a Media Center remote and I was recording live OTA TV the same evening I got the box from Newegg. With the install of the Media Browser plugin and Virtual Clone Drive I can also watch all my avi files and DVD ISOs. It's pretty sweet for under $400 for everything, especially since the Revo is a small, quiet, WiFi equipped box with HDMI. If you're interested http://revohtpc.com/ has a lot of information on what works. I figure if Win 7 ever pisses me off I can run XBMC on it, but for now I'm happy.

Re:I'm a long term Linux user! but...

[Anonymous Coward]

> I just made an HTPC with Win 7 media center! it's because I only choose the right one tool for me.

The right tool for the job also includes supporting the latest and most interesting recording hardware.

If you are going to be a Microsoft Shill that pretends to use Linux, then at least don't push inferior Win32 solutions.

Sadly this person is right. Without the ability to support M type cable cards myth is dead to me. In my area we're all digital and nothing would ever make me buy multiple cable boxes just so i can setup some complicated multiple IR blaster solution. Myth will either speed up development of these technologies or get left in the dust. To get around the digital encrypt issue i bought a Moxi (moxi.com). I wouldn’t really recommend it but I had to replace the old myth box some how.

Re:I'm a long term Linux user! but...

[Big Boss]

If you just want ATSC, get an HDHomeRun. Network connected, so no kernel level drivers. IR receiver included, open specs for the protocols. Fully supported in MythTV. I had the same experience with Myth years ago because I did some research and bought hardware that worked. If you do that, getting Myth working is pretty easy really. I set up the hardware, installed MythBuntu, and it "just worked" as far as the basics went. I did a lot of tweaking to get things the way I wanted them, but recording TV, watching recordings, and playing videos worked fine. It's even better now as you can use NVidia's VDPAU to handle playback so you can use low-power CPU devices like the Atom/ION combo. I used to need a fast dual core CPU, now an Atom works great.

All Win7 gives you over Linux/Myth in an HTPC is driver support, IMO. And even that is up to the hardware vendor to get right.

Re:I'm a long term Linux user! but...

[b0bby]

That HDHR does look nifty - if my cheapo usb tuner heads south I'd certainly consider something like that. I have to say the $30 tuner does a pretty good job - it picks up way more stations than the one built into the Dish VIP box. The Revo is really a quick and dirty solution, when I canceled Dish my wife wanted a replacement up & running quickly. If I bump into too many obstacles I'll give MythBuntu a whirl.

And CableCARD?

[mark0]

I have FiOS and until MythTV supports CableCARD, it's rather useless. A google of the site just turns up a dry wiki definition of CableCARD and a bunch of forum postings that degenerate into DRM-related poo flinging.

Re:And CableCARD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont' know if linux will ever be able to support CableCARD. HDHomeRun is coming out with a cable card version. the original HDHR is supported in mythtv, however, the makers have stated the CC one will only be supported in Win MC. Dude to cablelabs or whoever runs the cablecard spec and DRM. So if cablecard is that important to you, go with a windows media center, or a tivo.

Re:And CableCARD?

[digitalaudiorock]

From where I sit, as long as FIOS and all the other pay TV options require CableCARDs they're useless. That's why I've used nothing but OTA for the last 21 years.

...and for the record, since the CableCARD host interface license agreement forbids making decrypted content available in any user accessible bus, there will never be any open source compatible CableCARD device, that that sure isn't MythTV's fault.

Re:And CableCARD?

[Nukenbar]

OTA only huh? I guess you don't like watching many sports. That is the only reason the most guys that I know have cable.

Re:And CableCARD?

[Abcd1234]

I have FiOS and until MythTV supports CableCARD, it's rather useless.

What, you've never heard of an IR blaster? I've been recording premium content from my cable boxes for the last three years without any problems, and it was probably easier to set up than the nightmare that is CableCARD.

Re:And CableCARD?

[wagnerrp]

Right. It has nothing to do with DRM-related poo flinging. DRM requires the user have the content and the keys, so the only way you can prevent the user from having unauthorized access to the content is through obfuscation. When the code is freely available to open and alter, such schemes simply cannot work.

Re:And CableCARD?

[jedidiah]

Until I can get a CableCARD PC tuner at Best Buy or Frys, all of this whining about Linux not supporting CableCARD is mindless nonsense.

If these things ever really see the light of day, I suspect it's only because component tuner(s) are available.

I can buy one of those at Frys. ...and CableCARD is nothing more than a means to enforce DRM on what used to be an open protocol.

So you may find your blessed CC recordings less useful that you might like.

Re:And CableCARD?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reply above is from someone that has never configured any IR blaster in myth (obviously), and has definately not ever installed a cable card. Please if you have no experience with Myth, shut it!!

Re:And CableCARD?

[Abcd1234]

The reply above is from someone that has never configured any IR blaster in myth

Fail. I have two blasters controlling two DCT1525 boxes and it was actually fairly straight forward to set up.

has definately not ever installed a cable card.

You're right, that I haven't done. But, by all accounts, it's a horrible, horrible experience. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Re:And CableCARD?

[mark0]

If I wanted to watch down-converted recordings, I wouldn't have FiOS.

Re:And CableCARD?

[Abcd1234]

Someone's behind the times. HD component capture has been a done deal for over a year now.

Re:And CableCARD?

[Big Boss]

If you want CableCard, talk to CableLabs, they are the reason Myth (and all OSS projects) can't support CableCard. It's not "DRM-related poo flinging", it's stating the simple fact. If the government here had any balls, they would have required open access as I can't tune the CableCard device to a channel I'm not authorized for anyway. But they gov caved to the cable and MPAA lobby and here we sit with no access. You can use a normal capture card and an IR blaster, HD-PVR for HD channels. If you want this to change, convince some members of congress.

Re:And CableCARD?

[mldi]

I have FiOS and until MythTV supports CableCARD, it's rather useless. A google of the site just turns up a dry wiki definition of CableCARD and a bunch of forum postings that degenerate into DRM-related poo flinging.

The forum postings are correct. In fact, there's only 1 tuner card in existence right now that supports CableCard and it's tied to it's hardware (you have to buy it with the machine, or at least, you're supposed to do that). Reasoning? CableCard and the networks in general are a bunch of filthy cronies not willing to license it out to a wider set of devices. However, that process is well under way and several companies are ready to sell their own CableCard tuners now that the requirements have been relaxed. I imagine MythTV (well, Linux in general) will be ready to hop right on this to take advantage of it so we can finally do away with all those STBs.

Re:And CableCARD?

[Osty]

Until I can get a CableCARD PC tuner at Best Buy or Frys, all of this whining about Linux not supporting CableCARD is mindless nonsense.

You again! You're still as full of shit as ever. However since last time you spouted off your ignorant crap, Ceton has launched the pre-order for their InfiniTV 4 quad-tuner, which will ship in approximately 20 days. Ceton is a relatively small company at the moment so retail partnerships will probably take a while to materialize, but the card itself should be available from major online retailers (Amazon, Newegg, etc) once it officially launches at the end of this month. Price is $400, or $100/tuner.

Just today, Silicon Dust just showed off their 3-tuner device, announced a beta testing program, and availability of "in time for the holidays 2010". And since Silicon Dust's existing HDHR products are on the shelves at Fry's and other brick and mortar retailers, you can imagine this will also be available there once it launches. Price is still expected to be $250-260, or $83-86/tuner.

As I mentioned the last two times I had to put you in your place, the PC digital cable tuner market didn't really exist until last fall when Windows 7 shipped the ability to use DCTs without requiring a special OEM BIOS. Prior to that CableLabs had a lock on the market and nobody was interested in playing (ATI tried, but as of April this year they've completely discontinued their lame, expensive DCT offering). Opening up that market allowed for other players, but as the move was relatively sudden you have to allow time for development and manufacturing. Ceton is there now (CableLabs certification has been passed, cards are being manufactured in China for the pre-order run), Silicon Dust is actively engaged, and surely other tuner companies are eyeing the market to see how it pans out.

Re:And CableCARD?

[Osty]

I imagine MythTV (well, Linux in general) will be ready to hop right on this to take advantage of it so we can finally do away with all those STBs.

Not likely. Media Center gets to have access to CableCard tuners because it supports a compatible DRM format. The DCT cards from ATI (dead), Ceton (coming in a couple weeks), Silicon Dust (coming later this year), etc decrypt the incoming cable signal using the CableCard and then re-wrap the stream in Microsoft's PlayReady DRM. No support for PlayReady, no support for CableCard. Apps like SageTV (on Windows) have found a novel away of getting around this restriction -- rather than accessing the tuner directly, they instruct Media Center to schedule the recording, change live TV channels, etc. It's unlikely this is going to ever work on Linux (while you might get Media Center running in Wine, you'll still be missing the tuner card drivers).

While there's obviously the possibility of reverse engineering the process and breaking the encryption, the fact that ATI's DCT has been available for years now yet there's no such crack doesn't give much confidence that new tuners arriving on the scene will change that.

Re:And CableCARD?

[mldi]

*hopes smash to the ground* *sniff* That's a shame. However, I would like to point out that ATI's card did have a drawback: it was tied to hardware. It wasn't that long ago when ATI was told to release it OEM (I think soon after someone made progress on hacking it to work on other hardware). So, I guess I'll wait patiently to see if any real progress is ever made on the Linux side. Having more options in hardware might open up a few more possibilities/vulnerabilities. In the meantime... Cablevision, the Studios... really? Go ahead, keep cornering people into pirating shows they already pay for. See how that works out in the long run.

Re:And CableCARD?

[digitalaudiorock]

I watch a lot of NFL games...not a whole lot else. I get both New York and Philly markets so there are times I get Philly network games that my friends with cable can't get.

Still Doesn't help me out...

[supremebob]

I have an ATI AllInWonder 9800 Pro TV tuner card for my PC, and a Hauppauge USB TV Tuner stick for my laptop. Both are common as dirt, and neither of them are still supported by MythTV. Bummer.

Re:Still Doesn't help me out...

[kilbo]

neither of them are supported by Linux... MythTV doesn't have any specific tuner support, just what you can get working in the OS. Many many problems people have with MythTV are from using hardware not generally supported in Linux. Pick your hardware for the OS and it works very very well.

Re:Still Doesn't help me out...

[wagnerrp]

Nor should MythTV support either of those. The LinuxTV project provides hardware support. MythTV will use (with a couple exceptions) any card supported by one of the V4L, DVB, or IVTV APIs.

Re:Still Doesn't help me out...

[ElizabethGreene]

Mod Parent Up.

MythTv is NOT that hard to configure. Getting the hardware working properly is.

I spent three months dinking around trying to make a name brand and a white box PVR-250 work together in the same system. When I finally gave up and bought two PC HDTV 5500 vendor supported on linux cards then it "just worked".

Re:Still Doesn't help me out...

[ookaze]

I have an ATI AllInWonder 9800 Pro TV tuner card for my PC, and a Hauppauge USB TV Tuner stick for my laptop. Both are common as dirt, and neither of them are still supported by MythTV. Bummer.

It helps to understand what you're talking about though.
MythTV doesn't support any specific card or stick, the Linux kernel does, and the OS brings in some generic interfaces upon that.
MythTV then uses that.
It helps to read the MythTV documentation when you don't know anything about these, before trying to install such a complex application.
At least it would prevent you from saying stupid things, and direct you to LinuxTV site which lists hardware supported in Linux. I would be surprised your USB stick is not supported for example.

Re:Still Doesn't help me out...

[Big Boss]

Hardware support is one of the biggest reasons I bought an HDHomeRun. No kernel level drivers required, and an open spec for communication meant that any program could add support for it in userspace without any more info needed. And I got a fully supported IR receiver out of it as well.

Does it support HDCP decyryption yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it support HDCP decryption yet? If not its still not going to work for most people.

Re:Does it support HDCP decyryption yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it support HDCP decryption yet? If not its still not going to work for most people.

Come back when you know WTF you are talking about

Re:Does it support HDCP decyryption yet?

[wagnerrp]

Could you list any cards that support capture of encrypted HDMI content? They don't exist because the manufacturer would lose their license. We couldn't get an HDCP stream to decrypt even if we wanted to, nevermind the fact that most of the MythTV devs live within the US, where breaking encryption is akin to terrorism.

Re:Does it support HDCP decyryption yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually what I meant to say was DTCP for firewire so I could use it with a normal cablebox since my cable provider encrypts all output though firewire except for a few channels.

Re:Does it support HDCP decyryption yet?

[wagnerrp]

Normal DRM rules apply here. Open source projects cannot be licensed to support any form of DRM, as someone can just strip out the code blocking users access to copy-controlled content, recompile, and duplicate at will. Sure, someone could reverse engineer the handshake and decryption, but then we're right back to the whole "DMCA violators are terrorists" issue.

Re: recording cable

[tom17]

If it's anything like in Canada, he is screwed. Rogers encrypt ALL channels and there is no analogue option.
Sure, I could record from the component out, but then you have to say hi to Mr Analogue (although these days, not too much of a problem I guess).

Tom...

Is it non-fugly yet?

[shish]

I tried the previous version via mythbuntu, and found it so inconsistent and ugly (all those screenshots are from a single theme) that I even filed a bug report about it, but it was marked wontfix on the basis that a new version with new theme would be here in 6 months -- looking at the screenshots on the website I don't see much sign of improvement, can anyone who's used it comment?

Re:Is it non-fugly yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried the previous version via mythbuntu, and found it so inconsistent and ugly (all those screenshots are from a single theme) that I even filed a bug report about it, but it was marked wontfix on the basis that a new version with new theme would be here in 6 months -- looking at the screenshots on the website I don't see much sign of improvement, can anyone who's used it comment?

Your screenshot is from three versions ago, 24+ months. Myth has received a full UI rewrite since then. I also don't know what version of the myth website you are referring to, but it displays several of the new themes in screenshots.

http://www.fecitfacta.com/Arclight/Welcome.html

As an example of the new UI.

Moved to Media Portal

[segedunum]

I moved to Media Portal a while ago, and while integrating commercial skipping with it is a real pain I haven't missed MythTV. MythTV was great for several months, but I had to replace the system with an Asus Pundit and the level of hardware support for the graphics card was non-existent on a Linux system. In additon, I had problems with the Hauppauge dual tuner and the Linux drivers as it would quite often hang the card. I had no such problems with Windows and reception was far better.

MythTV is a nice piece of software, but it is still being let down by the level of Linux media hardware support and, on occasion, it's own media support. Playing DVDs reliably and playing things like MKVs still had me plugging in VLC as an external player. The only problem I have with Media Portal is that it doesn't play default subtitle and audios stream within MKVs - it insists on defaulting to English.

All-in-all, I just haven't missed MythTV.

Wow...Why the hate?

[Tteddo]

Jeez, I have been using MythTV since 2004 first on MythDora, then MythBuntu and after taking a week to set MythDora up in 2004, the 2 MythBuntu installs were way easy. I just downgraded my office machine (Lucid) to .21 so I don't have to upgrade the living room one yet. Maybe the dual tuner Hauppage card I researched first was the key, I don't know. Plus, in the MythBuntu forums I have always found everyone extremely helpful if I had a question.

Re: recording cable

[pnewhook]

How many channels can it record simultaneously? If it's just one (the one I'm watching) this does not seem to be a viable PVR replacement.

I'll wait a few weeks

[Seakip18]

I'll wait a few weeks for the package managers to get any fixes in them, but I fully intend on upgrading soon. It'll probably break my video card setup again, which'll require

I guess I'm just one of the few folks who are happy with MythTV on /.

It took a while to get it running smoothly. Plus, I can't think of any other projects that can manage schedules and records HDTV over clearQAM with the flexibility that a MythTV box does.

It's a pain, but, combined with the helpful folks at KernelLabs.com, it's getting better and better.

Re:I'll wait a few weeks

[Oblong_Cheese]

I dist-upgraded my Mythbuntu system from 9.10 to 10.04 a few days after 10.04 was released; after a database update, some minor tweaking of Mythvideo (I had to re-install it to get Jamu working again), everything's peachy.

However, I have a rather simple frontend+backend system with a single USB DVB-T tuner, so YMMV.

Re: recording cable

[colinnwn]

It can record as many channels as you have capture cards. It can even use capture cards on other Myth backends in multiple backend/frontend systems. On some digital multiplexed channels, one card can simultaneously record 2 channels in the same multiplexed stream. It's as good a PVR as you kit it out to be.

Not a mythtv issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anything open source support cable card? Don't complain to mythtv devs about it, complain to Verizon.

Where are the editors?

[tanderson92]

The time was once when slashdot articles were properly vetted and *edited*. "Work towards MythTV 0.24 is in full swing, and has be progressing..." 'be' rather than 'been'? Really slashdot?

Re:Where are the editors?

[Lancer]

The time was once when slashdot articles were properly vetted and *edited*.

I don't really want to start a "my UID is lower than yours" thread, but I certainly don't remember a time like that...

Re:Where are the editors?

[tanderson92]

Well, no one actually ever means "The time was once", at least not in my time here. I guess I should stop using it :p

Re: Some valid criticisms

[colinnwn]

"why can't myth have a "save my database" and "look in this directory for recordings" import , rather than me having to edit my 450MB MySQL database?"

Don't know the last time you tried, but since at least 0.22, it has exactly this using an included python script. Also I'm no fan of MySQL, but I've never had my database corrupt itself yet, and I've done upgrades every 6 months since MythBuntu 8.10. Wonder if there are other causes?

I imagine the reason for using the database to store confs (besides the fact when you already require one for recording metadata, many devs would probably be inclined to stuff everything in there), is to allow easier setup of multiple backend/frontend systems. The master backend contains all the confs, and other nodes can connect to a known port to retrieve them just like the master backend does, rather than maintaining separate code for the master backend to serve text conf files up to connecting nodes.

There is also the fact it makes developing alternative configuration editors easy. Right now you can edit the confs using the native tool on the local machine, using an included webpage/webserver, or external tools like myphpadmin or Microsoft Access. Also Myth has so damn many settings, that for power users and developers doing additions/debugging, using a database is probably easier to manage than a 1000 line long text file.

Now that I think about it, it sounds like a pretty reasonable idea.

Lack of good themes

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like mythtv, I've been using it for 2-3 years and it has become significantly more stable during that time. Today the biggest issue is that the UI and themes haven't really evolved as much as they could have - either themes are good looking and unusable or usable and bad looking. This is still true with the latest 0.23 version. Of course my expectations are quite high considering what you could do with a high def screen and a computer... Anyway, thank you mythtv developers! It's a really really amazing piece of software and one I use several hours per day.

Pay for it, then. Or do it yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay for it, then. Or do it yourself. Why not fill that need and sell a fork that is kind of the RHEL to MythTV's Fedora? If there are so many people who want/need/expect a product that comes with proper support and can be relied on, tap that market!

Setup is always painful but details change...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say it has changed in basic usability all that much. But I am very impressed with it on modern(ish) hardware, using current $50 USB tuners to capture ATSC and Clear QAM high def signals, cheap Intel GM45 graphics, software deinterlacing on a Q6600 CPU, and getting amazing image quality for all that. It clearly out performs the deinterlacer/scaler built into my Samsung TV for scaling everything up to 1080p. And I do surround passthrough over my ancient USB toslink sound card, so my hifi receiver can do the surround decoding itself.

The most horrifying part is configuring clear QAM cable channels, because scanning can yield many junk channels that have to be manually deleted (and they can crash the viewer when you try to preview them, so this process itself is very slow), and then you have to watch each channel to identify it and construct a manual mapping. I really wish some additional effort could be done to export/import these channel maps and get community-based sharing of this work. I don't know if the maps could be included into the schedulesdirect listings data, but that would be best, so you could get the mapping with your lineup.

Another issue is that analog tuners are becoming obsolete, and some hardware that used to "work" now has no Linux driver, and many of the newer hybrid analog/digital tuners have good digital support but bad or nonexistent analog support in their drivers. So you have to do you hardware compatibility research very carefully, focusing on contemporary support information and ignoring old "works for me" reports that are no longer valid.

Re:Setup is always painful but details change...

[PunditGuy]

The most horrifying part is configuring clear QAM cable channels

Use the Web interface to do this; it's a breeze. (Comcast recently moved a bunch of digital channels around and I had to rescan.) Check a box next to any channel that didn't get an ID and delete them all in one fell swoop.

Re:Setup is always painful but details change...

[Anonymous Coward]

With TimeWarner cable, NO channels get identified automatically. Hundreds show up, and half are broken in ways that crash out the LiveTV front end, at worst case requiring me to do a loop of stop mythbackend, run mythsetup to change the default channel number for the input to a non-crashy one, restart mythbackend, and continue until the next crashy one.

I have to watch the channels and manually edit the channel list just as you mention, deleting useless or crashy ones and entering callsign/xmltvid info for the ones I identify by watching until they do station identification or similar. It's a horrible process I have to do after any scanning. Since scanning does not identify channels, I have to drop all channels and rescan from scratch each time, or else get a complete mess.

Re: Some valid criticisms

[MrNemesis]

Don't know the last time you tried, but since at least 0.22, it has exactly this using an included python script.

Last I looked the backup script didn't offer the option to change, e.g. the location of recorded TV shows, so you always need to keep the same paths all the time... so I can't just build myself a new system and import my config into it without editing it first, as paths may well have changed.

In terms of storing global configurations in the database, I'm all for that and it makes plenty of sense. But when there doesn't seem to be an option of "copy all my settings for host X to host Y except for machine/hardware-specific ones" I don't see the point, and using mythweb/phpmyadmin for editing a config file is even clunkier than using the UI - there's no reason why things like screen resolution, sound setup, OGL settings, etc should be stored globally - but in any case if you do want everything in the database it's perfectly simple to have the myth programs parse a text file on startup and insert the data into the DB. This would have saved me no end of problems when I had a system that would freeze and crash X (due to buggy intel drivers) with the OGL painter enabled. Sure, it's simpler for devs but much, much harder for users.

Re: Some valid criticisms

[colinnwn]

"Last I looked the backup script didn't offer the option to change, e.g. the location of recorded TV shows, so you always need to keep the same paths all the time...".

I believe by default all TV recordings go to /var/lib/mythtv/recordings. I don't see value in granulating them further. So if you decide to put recordings on another disk or in a different location on a subsequent install, the easy way is to just symlink the new location to /var/lib/mythtv/recordings and no database edits are necessary. Now if you are talking about putting other videos in different places, that is probably harder?

"But when there doesn't seem to be an option of "copy all my settings for host X to host Y except for machine/hardware-specific ones" I don't see the point,"

I don't follow I guess. Master backend X database should contain settings for all clients Y,Z,A. So the host settings are already copied for you, just not in your preferred format. I haven't had a good enough reason to do a multiple client install yet. Are you saying that new clients must be configured from the ground up, and the Myth system isn't smart enough to autopopulate global configs, and request only machine specific configs be manually entered on new clients?

"and using mythweb/phpmyadmin for editing a config file is even clunkier than using the UI"

I don't know. I like mythweb good enough. And after dicking with LIRC text configs forever in Nano, I sorely wished I could have been doing it with phpmyadmin or Access. Though for most quick setting changes, it is overkill. The native UI pisses me off because it can't switch back and forth between showing the mouse cursor in the config UI and hiding it in the regular frontend. So I have to blindly fumble around in the config UI until the cursor hits an editable field.

"perfectly simple to have the myth programs parse a text file on startup and insert the data into the DB. This would have saved me no end of problems ... Sure, it's simpler for devs but much, much harder for users"

It is just one more step in the process that could go wrong and lead to unintended problems later. Though you make a good argument that machine specific settings should stay on the machine (and perhaps in a text file if there aren't that many) as long as the machine specific settings are correctly categorized.

I bet over half the Myth users aren't doing anything as involved as what you discussed here, so they probably don't care either way. And these are pretty savvy users compared to the average computer user. Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of pain from my Myth install. And listening / second hand relay of some of the dev discussions sounds like they aren't predisposed to really focusing on the end user. But I'm not sure changing what they have done would be the best use of their time.

Re: recording cable

[pnewhook]

Ok, thanks for answering and sorry for my ignorance on this.

What capture cards are recommended? Do I just split my cable from the wall into as many inputs as I need and feed them individually to each capture card?

Re: recording cable

[colinnwn]

No problem.

I'd strongly suggest a HDHomeRun for free to air digital or clear QAM cable TV. If that is too expensive, most Hauppauge cards are supported, though the best dual tuner model HVR-2250 isn't much cheaper than a dual tuner HDHR. pcHDTV cards are also well supported, being specifically Linux hardware.

If you want to record encrypted cable and want it HD, the best choice is a Hauppauge HDPVR encoding from your cable box component output. Though that is pricey. If you still need analog cable, the best is to get a Hauppauge PVR-150/250/350/500 card.

Most cards will require you to use a splitter from your wall outlet into their multiple inputs if they are a dual tuner card, or to split them for multiple single tuner cards. If you have a lot of other splitters in your house cable wiring, you may need to get a high quality digital cable TV amplifier. You can get one on eBay for about $30. Tuner cards need a powerful signal. The HVR-2250 is the only dual tuner card I know of that has one input that is split between the tuners internally.

Re: Some valid criticisms

[MrNemesis]

The problem with the symlinking of stuff is that, after a few generations of hardware, it gets very messy and complicated. I settled on stuff in /storage/tvstore but I think just symlinking stuff all over the place is inelegant; when I was importing recording and metadata from two other systems, it was either "create random symlinks everywhere depending on where system owner put his recordings" or manually edit the database exports.

And yeah, last time I setup a frontend I had to do it from scratch. It picked up the backend settings from the database, but all other settings had to be changed manually. This would be alot more bearable if I could just go into, say, mythweb and copy the host settings for host X to host Y, but last time I looked it wasn't there.

Horses for courses on the editing front I guess - I'm pretty familiar with lirc and can thrash out a config file and have irw spitting out the right buttons in a few minutes... but as to why I have to manually create an lircrc for Myth? No idea. At least xine allows you to dump out a default lircrc keymap which you can just populate with your own values.

Completely agree about the settings being categorised - in fact I'd be happier if they were nicely categorised in the database, but as it is they're all just glommed into a single table listed in alphabetical order, without any sort of hierarchical structure in the key names (such as you do with objects in firefox's about:config for example) - wouldn't it be nice to have a frontend.display.widgets.renderer = opengl for instance?

Agree that it's entirely possible I'm doing very complicated things, but this is why I get so annoyed at the bulk of Myth power users; I say something's needlessly complicated, and I'm told it's because Myth is so powerful. If something powerful doesn't work as I'd like it to, I'm told I'm making things needlessly complicated.

Academic perhaps, as with the advent of iplayer, the general shittiness of broadcast TV and more disposable income meaning towers of DVD box sets to watch we're spending less and less time watching the tube, but I'd still like to see Myth living up to its potential. But like you say the devs have practically zero focus on the end user so I don't hold out much hope.

Re: recording cable

[Big Boss]

HDHomeRun, and yes.

Re: recording cable

[ncc74656]

Even if you have to use a cable box, MythTV can record the composite or component out on the way to the TV.

If your cable box has a FireWire output, MythTV can record from that as well. It captures the MPEG-2 transport stream for the selected channel as it comes down the wire, so no reencoding is done by the backend.

mythtv is junk

[mnbjhguyt]

I strongly advice everyone using mythtv to move to vdr instead. I did a year ago, after 3 years of mythtv, it's another league as far as usability. It you need al the non-tv addons you're better off with xbmc+vdr. do yourself a favour and drop mythtv now.

Re:mythtv is junk

[Dan667]

thank you scared Comcast or Time Warner Representative. The rest of us are happy using MythTV.

my report ...

[nblender]

I lost a disk a few weeks ago and lost my myth-0.21 mysql db's (as well as everything else on the OS disk)... For reasons best left to everyone's imaginations, the most recent backup I had was over a year old... So I decided to just cut and run. I installed mythbuntu 10.04 with 0.23-rc2 on my backend and rebuilt my frontends at the same time. Then I imported my old database and did the upgrade... It all came up ok modulo updating my recording settings... So far it's all been working fairly 'ok'. I'm using firewire to capture from DCT6200's and for the most part, it's been working ok... LiveTV hangs for my wife occasionally...

my biggest beef so far is that the setting for mythvideo to remember your place in the video hierarchy seems to be gone so if you're watching 10 seasons of DVDrip over a span of several weeks you have to write down what episode you last watched if you leave mythvideo and head to recordings... That used to work perfectly in 0.21 but the setting is now gone. Am I the only one who relied on that feature?

My next beef is the updated mechanism for deleting a recording... You have to hit 'd' now.. That's just a mental-programming exercise though.

I must also say the install to my Mac Mini frontend went flawlessly and is working well. Also the install to my Acer Aspire net-box thingy also went well and is a terrific cheap little frontend for watching HD (with VDPAU)...

Anyway, so far so good.

Well I like it

[TinheadNed]

Congrats to the devs for knocking out another version of MythTV. I don't care that the arbitrary version number is low.

Been using it for 4 years now.

Re: Some valid criticisms

[wagnerrp]

MythTV does not store the location of recorded shows, all it stores is the base filename, storage group, and hostname. If the recording is in any folder defined as part of that storage group, it will find it. If the recording is in any folder defined as part of any storage group, it will find it. If you want to move your recordings to a different folder, all you have to do is tell MythTV what folder that is, and it won't care.

The only thing you can do that could cause it problems is changing the hostname of your backend server. The backup script provides options for migrating from one hostname to another.

Re: Some valid criticisms

[wagnerrp]

Completely agree about the settings being categorised - in fact I'd be happier if they were nicely categorised in the database, but as it is they're all just glommed into a single table listed in alphabetical order, without any sort of hierarchical structure in the key names (such as you do with objects in firefox's about:config for example) - wouldn't it be nice to have a frontend.display.widgets.renderer = opengl for instance?

Agree that it's entirely possible I'm doing very complicated things, but this is why I get so annoyed at the bulk of Myth power users; I say something's needlessly complicated, and I'm told it's because Myth is so powerful. If something powerful doesn't work as I'd like it to, I'm told I'm making things needlessly complicated.

Technically, there is no ordering of settings in the database. They are just inserted as needed. If they showed up in alphabetical order, its because you sorted them that way in your select statement. Manual tinkering with settings outside the GUI has never been recommended or supported in any manner.

Almost everyone will agree that there are far too many settings, and that their layout could be handled better. MythTV was designed for, and used on for several years, low resolution standard definition TVs. What works there doesn't make much sense on a higher resolution display. I have to say 'almost everyone', as there has been concerted effort over the past year to clear out bad and unnecessary settings. Every time something would be removed, people would pop into the mailing list and IRC channels bickering about how they couldn't live without their particular pet setting. Nevermind the fact that the setting was no longer even functional, and when it previously did function, enabling it caused bad things to happen.

Re: recording cable

[JackieBrown]

According to this, I get the network channels many times over. I did not see USA, SciFi, TNT, Lifetime, etc on the list.

http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/lineup_web/US:78229

I have wondered about the analog because the TV in my bedroom is analog.

I wish there was a tvcard that pretended to be a tv so I could just output the signal from my cable card to my tv card.

Re: recording cable

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

I've been using Myth for ages now with DirecTV (I rewrote one of the early versions of the directv.pl tuner script) and have been happy with it. But... so far it's always been standard def TV, even though I've got a 19" 720p panel attached to the Mythbox.

What sort of HD can I get out of the component plugs? And why does this work? Because it is still "analog" and the media companies are not yet super anal about this particular work around? Also, does this mean that there isn't a method for locking down component output signals? I'd hate to try this and find that when I tune a premium channel I get junk... although, I suppose that depends on how the receiver box is designed.

If I can get a decent picture in this manner, I may have to upgrade. Hmm...

If I'm only interested in 720p component signals, what HD capture card would you recommend? I've been using a Hauppauge PVR-250 for years and it's been good to me, despite being std. def.

Re: recording cable

[colinnwn]

That's cool about you rewriting the DirecTV script. About the only thing I have done is a super trivial PHP fix to the recordings page on a very old version of Knoppmyth so downloading the episode would work, then notifying their forum how to do it.

Component can carry all consumer HD resolutions through 1080p, whatever the cable box will put out. Some cable companies reduce the resolution on cable box component out for some or all programming, based on their contracts with stations and media companies.

I don't think many are disabling it entirely or downsampling OTA stations they carry on only the component out. They want to stay competitive with broadcast, DVD, and Netflix, and component signal is the lowest common denominator for HD playback. Until recently, the ability of a consumer to reencode component signal at HD quality was pretty limited and very expensive.

Before investing in switching, I'd contact my cable company to verify their available cable box has a component out, and they don't do, or rarely do selective output downsampling or disabling. Good luck getting a cable CSR drone to understand that. Better to ask if they ever reduce the HD resolution on the component out or turn it off for some programs. You can't do DRM on component signal other than turning them off or downsampling. If it doesn't work, or they change policy, I'm sure you could sell your HD-PVR on ebay and recover most of the cost.

The only affordable way to do this I know of is the fairly recent Hauppauge HD-PVR http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html. You can get it on Amazon for about $200. It takes a component signal up to 1080i and hardware encodes it into H.264 before passing the stream off to your computer. Seems like Myth users don't seem to have much trouble with it now that it is officially supported.

I have also heard there are HDMI to component converter dongles made unlicensed in China that ignores HDMI HDCP and allows you to watch or record any high def signal you want. If you can find it, I think they run about $100. But I think if the component pushing the HDMI is connected to the internet, DCP could revoke the key and prevent the dongle from working. The Chinese company would then need to break the new key and provide the updated key to you. But I don't know if these dongles are field updateable.

Re: recording cable

[colinnwn]

I did not see USA, SciFi, TNT, Lifetime, etc on the list.

On most networks, those are sent in encrypted QAM, so the HDHR can't tune them. Generally cable companies only send OTA channels, and a few things like C-SPAN and Discovery in clear QAM. You'd have to use a cable box and a Hauppauge HD-PVR encoder for e-QAM.

Any analog station you can receive on a TV without a cable box can be recorded by a cheap Hauppauge PVR-150/250/350/500 card and Myth.

I wish there was a tvcard that pretended to be a tv so I could just output the signal from my cable card to my tv card.

There are no real differences between a tuner in a TV and a tuner in a computer TV card. The method media companies try to use to prevent watching TV in ways they don't like is using licensed encryption that is technically illegal to break, easily changed, and not very easy to bypass. So if a computer card company comes to them and asks for the license and encryption keys to produce a product, and the media company doesn't agree with the proposal, they don't hand over the goods.

If I understand you right, and you want to record channels only available on your cable box that contains a CableCard encryption module, and your cable box has component out, the only way to record it with Myth is using a Hauppauge HD-PVR. There are a few Windows solutions that support CableCard encryption if the entire system from motherboard to monitor supports HDCP.

Re: recording cable

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Very interesting, indeed. And a lot to think about. In my case, I'll be dealing with DirecTV drones instead of cable drones. I *think* the former are slightly better, but I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Both the HD-PVR and the dongle sound promising. The DirecTV receiver is not connected to the Internet, but DirecTV is capable of pushing whatever software or updates it wishes down though its satellites, so I suppose it is possible that they could revoke the key that this dongle uses in that manner.

Thanks again for the tips!

And MythTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have MythTV and until encrypted TV supports MythTV, encrypted TV is useless.

It's not that you're wrong; it's that you're biased, or if that's too damning, then let's just say you have a very inflexible preference.

There is a solution to the problem (fire the TV company since they are going out of their way to keep things from working) but you're loyal to them. Ok, loyalty is virtuous. I'm sure the president of Comcast saved your life back in 'nam or something. You owe him. I understand. But the rest of us who have fired our asshole cable/telecom companies, sure are a lot happier, and we get to use MythTV too!