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

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]

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]

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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: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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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: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: 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.

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: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.

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.

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: 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.

Re:worth upgrading?

[Dan667]

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

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: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.