Your machine spec almost mirrors mine - PIII/550, and I went with Knoppmyth. Unfortunately, I found that I would need a new video card (and PCI at that) and a new capture card to get the capture and output to a TV. [...] With the two cards and a stock-compliant network interface (had to be USB - only 2 slots in the PC I had) that would mean close to 3/4 the cost of a TiVo, just to get it working on an "underpowered" box. Yikes. Ouch - luckily my box has AGP graphics and some more PCI slots. However, since DVB-T tuner cards are so darn expensive (and I absolutely *had* to have 2 of them...), I most certainly paid more for my box than I would have for a TiVo. But again, with noting remotely like TiVo over here, it's the only option I had.
Since I used to work as a programmer for a couple of years and had always wanted to take the time to build my own DVR, this was a nice hobby project for me, and from what I've researched, MythTV seems to be the most powerful DVR solution out there. However you're absolutely right: At this time, it's not something that you can trust the average "I-just-want-my-DVR-to-work"-person to setup without getting frustrated.
It may work, if you happen to have have the right ditro and the right hardware, but as soon as you encounter any setup glitch, you've got to deal with Linux issues - which is not necessarily something people want to do when setting up a DVR.
Looking at the way, Linux matured over the past few years, that's hopefully going to change sometime soon, but as for now, a new MythTV DVR is a project, not an appliance. A rewarding project, for sure, but one that might involve tinkering, a learning curve, and require time not everyone can spare.
That said, as soon as it does work, it's one cool toy.:-)
It is interesting that it's all pay for service. It isn't necessarily. In every country other than the US and Canada, people are using either the EIT data embedded int he program stream, or are relying on an xmltv grabber to scrape some websites. Both options work, and they are free. North America, however, used to have the best free option out there: Zap2It offered free guide data with far superior metadata, tailored to your exact cable provider and zip code. As a result, nobody bothered writing screen scrapers - why should they if there's such a great free source.
Now that this source is going away, people have two options, if they want to stick with MythTV: They can either get the same high quality data for a fee, or they can roll their own screen scrapers (or hope somebody else does) to get their data the same way overseas users have been doing it all along.
I went about trying to get Myth running on an old box to see what it was like, and gave up after a week of frustration. The whole idea was (a) minimize the box cost (extsing HW) and (b) eliminate the recurring costs. I can't comment on your specific issued, of course, hwoever I got Myth running on a 600 MHz (or something like that, not sure of the exact speed) PIII without anything worse than your regular linux multimedia setup issues. Took me a couple of nights of tinkering, but that was mainly because I chose to use Gentoo - a friend of mine used Konoppmyth instead and was ready within an afternoon.
After spending a dozen hours, and reading about the transition, it occured to me that TiVo is offering not just the data, but a software maintenance contract. [...] And based on the time spent^wwasted on my vain attempt - $3 seems pretty affordable to hire out the ugly work. Sure - at this point, initial MythTV setup still isn't nearly as simple as plugging in a TiVo. As a German, I don't have much of an option - there's nothing like TiVo over here. If I had, I probably wouldn't have bothered building a Mythbox. Or maybe I would have - because it can do prettly much all I would want from a TiVo and then some.
Of course, I'd like unfettered video extraction, too...but then we're off into "I want a pony" land for the commerical products. Exactly - and that's one of the big advantages MythTV (or any computer-based DVR solution) has over something like TiVo. If money were no problem, I would probably go for something like a Mac mini with EyeTV and a Drobo attached. As it is, MythTV fits the bill for me quite nicely. YMMV.
I wonder how difficult it would be to make changes to mythtv so that it could scrape my cable providers tv listings. You wouldn't need to make any changes to mythtv - all you'd need to do is change one of the existing xmltv screen scrapers to do just that. The xmltv scraper is a seperate tool that's not part of mythtv, so you wouldn't even need to update it when mythtv changes.
The downside: You'd need to update it whenever you cable company changes its web site. No such hassle with the paid service.
My German friends laughed at me because of my guns. "Why would you need that unless you are going to kill someone?" they said. "To protect myself from others who have them" I said. "Then why don't they make them illegal?" they said. Not trying to start an endless gun argument here, but that analogy is flawed. You wouldn't be able to accidentially kill or hurt someone with this piece of software. And while you'd want to keep the program out of your kids' reach (as soon as they're computer literate enough to use it), if they did manage to get their hands on it, they couldn't endanger themselves and others by playing with it the same way they could if they found a gun.
No matter what you think about gun ownership, the potential consequences of gun abuse are far greater than those of misusing a program like this one, so there's no inherent reason both should be treated equally by law.
Perhaps Windows will share a similar fate? One can hope. Not as long as changing your OS is as painless and non-commital as changing your browser. And should that ever be the case, the OS itself probably wouldn't matter much anyway.
(Actually, things like VMWare and WINE do make switching easier, but it's still a far cry from the "grandma acceptance" state.)
I know that many regular movie watchers have trouble realizing its greatness, because much of the techniques it pioneered are standard practice nowadays.
That's funny, because my impression after watching "Citizen Kane" was much different. It seemed to me that the cinematography/direction was considerably *more* advanced than any other movie I had ever seen. I remember thinking, "Wow, they were doing all of that back then! Hollywood really dropped the ball."
Maybe I just know the wrong people...:-)
BTW: What makes "Citizen Kane" even more fantastic is the fact that Welles had never directed a movie before - although, of course, much of the movie's visual brilliance is owed to Gregg Toland - one of Hollywood's best cinematographers.
Even if you played them today, you likely wouldn't feel the same sense of wonder players did back then, because you've seen more complex games before. It'd still be great from a historian's perspective, but it will not elicit the same emotions.
And that is why sales of Wii virtual console games are dead in the water. My comment came out wrong - tried to clarify it here.
A lot of the old coin-op games are as playable now as they were decades ago when they first came out. I didn't mean to imply they're not playable - I'm a great fan of old games and spend a lot of time in my Wii's Virtual Console.
I'm constantly amazed at how playing a game that I may have discovered and played once in a Shakey's Pizza in Warner Robins, Georgia in the early '80s really takes me back to that time and place. That's nostalgia though, which is most likely not what you've felt the first time playing it, and it'll only work if you've played that game "back in the days". Todays (and future) kids will not have that feeling, because they've never played these games when they were new. (Just like you may enjoy watching a movie form the 1920s, but most likely not because it remindes you how you went to see it when it came out.)
My point was just: It's impossible to experience games, movies, book, really any non-recent work of culture the same way people did when it came out, simply because of the massively different context.
Perhaps I'm getting way too academic, though - after all, no matter what the reason, a session of "Super Mario Brothers" or "Donkey Kong" is still a lot fun, and so are movies like "The General" or "Safety Last". That's probably more important than arguing about whether you're having fun for the same reason, people did back then.
Well, hopefully they can make printing via a network Just Work now. The hours I spent getting my MBP to print via my fathers XP machine on his Canon IP4000... Interesting: I've never had any problems connecting my iBook G4 to network printers, no matter whether they were hosted on Macs, Linux or Windows. Looks like either you were unlucky or I've been lucky so far.
Guess that's why it's so hard to rely on anecdotal evidence one way or the other.
Games are made and there is no attempt to preserve them for the future.
You can still watch a film/movie/moving picture made 50 years ago but with games you can't play a game made as recently as 5 years ago!! [...] Until that happens any history on games where I can't actually play the game in question is bullshit. It is the equivalent of a Wikipedia entry describing a film which will never capture the emotion of the media in question. While I agree that it's a shame many of those old classics can't be played anymore, I disagree with the conclusion:
a) Even if you played them today, you likely wouldn't feel the same sense of wonder players did back then, because you've seen more complex games before. It'd still be great from a historian's perspective, but it will not elicit the same emotions. (E.g. while I'm a film buff and love "Citizen Kane", I know that many regular movie watchers have trouble realizing its greatness, because much of the techniques it pioneered are standard practice nowadays. You can't go back and watch it with the fresh eyes and minds of those who'd only seen the movies made before it.)
b) Writing about games you cannot play anymore isn't "bullshit" - if something doesn't exist anymore, does that mean we should destroy all knowledge related to it? On the contrary, I'd say these histories are extremely important to preserve as much of the legacy as possible. Sure, it can never replace the original games, but if you don't remind people these things have been out there, they'll forget them. And that'll make sure nobody will ever try to resurrect them.
Somebody showed me the cool 'birds eye view' on http://maps.live.com/ (firefox or IE required, safari doesn't work)... it blew me away. It is cool - although the interface has a few "microsoftian" quirks.
E.g: Why does one drag around the map under the field of vision? This strangely reverses controls. It'd feel much more natural to drag the field across the map the way a brid or a plane would fly around.
The same thing goes for the buttons that indicate the direction you're looking towards: The map doesn't change its orientation (rightfully so), it keeps North on top at all times. So why do the buttons on the compass interface wander around? Unless you happen to be looking North, they're not corresponding to the map display next to them, and they're confusing, because in our culture, people have been raised to expect North on top. Also, having buttons trade places after you clicked on them is almost never a good idea. (Just remeber the mess you have with multi-row tabbed dialogs under Windows...)
Still, the technology itself is impressive, but they should have done some usability testing on the interface.
Rayman: I was halfway-enjoying the first round or 2. When it came to the area with the close-the-toilet-door scene, it was ridiculous. Not only was that event nearly impossible, the others were hard enough that I didn't care anymore, either. Really? I didn't think that part was *that* hard - and I'm most certainly a casual gamer (I usually only play 2 or 3 times per month if that often.) There are a lot harder challenges coming up a few rounds later, and I could usually beat them after 4 or 5 tries.
I don't enjoy games that I fight the interface, rather than play the game. This is mostly because I hate the pointing system on the Wii. There is no way to calibrate it to my TV That could actually go a long way to explain your troubles - if your setup doesn't work, it's going to make *every* game that much more difficult.
Aww man get my hopes up! Cepstral voice reading me a Slashdot story?? MEH! I may be a geek, but I'm apparently not geeky enough to appreciate the monotonous reading style of current TTS-Systems. It's certainly a great service for the visually impaired or anyone else who doesn't have time or opportunity to read/., but I just can't stand listening to the voice for more than a couple of seconds.
I like the new discussion system, but it's a hassle that it still doesn't seem to allow top-level replies. (I.e. to reply directly to the article, I need to switch it off.)
Wikipedia seems to be run entirely by science geeks who never figured out that highschool and TV are brainwashing tactics. [...] Thus, in Wikipedia, if it doesn't fit with conventional wisdom, it isn't in there. The same goes for any kind of encyclopedia. They're not supposed to be springboards for new ideas, instead they collect those ideas deemed to be the current consensus.
Besides, as long as you don't name any specific articles and they deficiencies, it's hard to decide whether your argument has any merit or whether you're just a conspiracy theorist who's ticked off that his personal view of the world is not represented on Wikipedia.
(Please don't take that personally, I have no opinion on you one way or the other, but as long as you don't state what you're talking about, it's hard to judge it.)
I haven't played around with Leopard myself yet, but I imagine a semi-translucent menu bar and a reflecting dock could get confusing sometimes.
E.g., I've read in a review that the new indicator for running applications - a small glowing dot - is sometimes difficult to spot between reflections on the dock. If that's the case, it seems like an unfortunate case of valuing eye candy higher than usability. I haven't read anything similar about the menu bar, but translucency on major interface items can be a pain.
FTA:
In a little more than a month, Apple's development team targets a feature-full build. [...] The milestone that will follow the total feature-freeze is slated for September, as the target of Apple's internal development team is a totally feature-full and stable Final Candidate version of Mac OS X Leopard. [...] In early to mid October, Leopard should reach the Golden Master status and Apple will be launching the DVD and packaging production. [...] Finally, the release is scheduled for late October Is that a realistic time frame? Seems to be an awfully short to me, then again I've never been involved in projects on that kind of scale.
You know what I see it useful in? A camera, so that it could automatically add the location to the EXIF data of each photo taken.
Yep, I'd love a GPS-enabled camera, as well. I think Kodak had one on the market a few years ago, but it was an expensive high-end model. Currently, I'm using a Symbian phone + BT GPS unit + phototagging software to achieve the same result, but in-camera GPS would be much appreciated. Still, I think it's a price issue there, too. Anything but Sirf III is pretty much too flaky to use (and even that needs up to a minute to get its bearings), and those chipsets are still expensive.
While this might be a nice geek toy, it wouldn't be practical for everyday use. Picture the scenario: You're in some unknown city, now you have to pull out your MacBook (better hope the battery's charged). After that you can either whip out your phone as well to switch on Bluetooth and get your laptop online via GSM or UMTS, or you've got to find a WLAN hotspot which would only let you look up stuff around that very hotspot. Not a killer app. Not Apple-like at all.
I could see something like this being useful on a PDA or a cell phone (if you've got a data plan), so it might be a feature of the rumored "iPhone". However, looking at the prices for Bluetooth GPS units, I wonder whether the chipsets aren't too expensive to make them a default option.
> Concerts. It's how artists make their real money anyway....
An we all know how downright mainstream the Beatles became after they stopped doing concerts in the mid-60s - just think of the catchy pop-tunes of "Strawberry fields forever" or "Revolution 9" compared to their earlier art-rock extravaganza "She loves you"...
The Austrialian/European version of EyeTV for digital over-the-air TV (DVB-T standard) doesn't convert the video format at all - it "just" singles out one MPEG2 stream from all those transmitted and sends it over to be saved on the Mac's HD.
My guess is that the HDTV version works the same way. Re-encoding the material on the fly would probably be too processor intensive, so it's easier to have a simple editor built into the software. Besides: iMovie is pretty self-contained. It wants its own project files,etc. For simple editing, you'd want something like QuickTime Pro, which can edit a single file without all the hassles iMovie puts you through. And, basically, EyeTV's editor feels almost like QuickTime Pro (a bit better with the thumbnails and such) but it comes with the device and is integrated into the recording and scheduling software whereas QuickTime Pro costs extra money and is an external application.
If you really need to do some iMovie tricks with your recordings, I'm sure there's a way to turn them into a DV stream, but most poeple won't want to do that, so I think it's wise they don't force users to create an iMovie project just to edit out some simple commercials - EyeTV's own editor does that just fine.
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Since I used to work as a programmer for a couple of years and had always wanted to take the time to build my own DVR, this was a nice hobby project for me, and from what I've researched, MythTV seems to be the most powerful DVR solution out there. However you're absolutely right: At this time, it's not something that you can trust the average "I-just-want-my-DVR-to-work"-person to setup without getting frustrated.
It may work, if you happen to have have the right ditro and the right hardware, but as soon as you encounter any setup glitch, you've got to deal with Linux issues - which is not necessarily something people want to do when setting up a DVR.
Looking at the way, Linux matured over the past few years, that's hopefully going to change sometime soon, but as for now, a new MythTV DVR is a project, not an appliance. A rewarding project, for sure, but one that might involve tinkering, a learning curve, and require time not everyone can spare.
That said, as soon as it does work, it's one cool toy.
Now that this source is going away, people have two options, if they want to stick with MythTV: They can either get the same high quality data for a fee, or they can roll their own screen scrapers (or hope somebody else does) to get their data the same way overseas users have been doing it all along. I went about trying to get Myth running on an old box to see what it was like, and gave up after a week of frustration. The whole idea was (a) minimize the box cost (extsing HW) and (b) eliminate the recurring costs. I can't comment on your specific issued, of course, hwoever I got Myth running on a 600 MHz (or something like that, not sure of the exact speed) PIII without anything worse than your regular linux multimedia setup issues. Took me a couple of nights of tinkering, but that was mainly because I chose to use Gentoo - a friend of mine used Konoppmyth instead and was ready within an afternoon. After spending a dozen hours, and reading about the transition, it occured to me that TiVo is offering not just the data, but a software maintenance contract. [...] And based on the time spent^wwasted on my vain attempt - $3 seems pretty affordable to hire out the ugly work. Sure - at this point, initial MythTV setup still isn't nearly as simple as plugging in a TiVo. As a German, I don't have much of an option - there's nothing like TiVo over here. If I had, I probably wouldn't have bothered building a Mythbox. Or maybe I would have - because it can do prettly much all I would want from a TiVo and then some. Of course, I'd like unfettered video extraction, too...but then we're off into "I want a pony" land for the commerical products. Exactly - and that's one of the big advantages MythTV (or any computer-based DVR solution) has over something like TiVo. If money were no problem, I would probably go for something like a Mac mini with EyeTV and a Drobo attached. As it is, MythTV fits the bill for me quite nicely. YMMV.
The downside: You'd need to update it whenever you cable company changes its web site. No such hassle with the paid service.
"Why would you need that unless you are going to kill someone?" they said.
"To protect myself from others who have them" I said.
"Then why don't they make them illegal?" they said. Not trying to start an endless gun argument here, but that analogy is flawed. You wouldn't be able to accidentially kill or hurt someone with this piece of software. And while you'd want to keep the program out of your kids' reach (as soon as they're computer literate enough to use it), if they did manage to get their hands on it, they couldn't endanger themselves and others by playing with it the same way they could if they found a gun.
No matter what you think about gun ownership, the potential consequences of gun abuse are far greater than those of misusing a program like this one, so there's no inherent reason both should be treated equally by law.
Actually, they could have used the same technique as with the dams:
- Deploy skipping bomb.
- Rabbit sees bomb skipping, gets horny.
- Rabbit attempts to mate with bomb.
- BOOM!
(Actually, things like VMWare and WINE do make switching easier, but it's still a far cry from the "grandma acceptance" state.)
Maybe I just know the wrong people...That's funny, because my impression after watching "Citizen Kane" was much different. It seemed to me that the cinematography/direction was considerably *more* advanced than any other movie I had ever seen. I remember thinking, "Wow, they were doing all of that back then! Hollywood really dropped the ball."
BTW: What makes "Citizen Kane" even more fantastic is the fact that Welles had never directed a movie before - although, of course, much of the movie's visual brilliance is owed to Gregg Toland - one of Hollywood's best cinematographers.
And that is why sales of Wii virtual console games are dead in the water. My comment came out wrong - tried to clarify it here.
My point was just: It's impossible to experience games, movies, book, really any non-recent work of culture the same way people did when it came out, simply because of the massively different context.
Perhaps I'm getting way too academic, though - after all, no matter what the reason, a session of "Super Mario Brothers" or "Donkey Kong" is still a lot fun, and so are movies like "The General" or "Safety Last". That's probably more important than arguing about whether you're having fun for the same reason, people did back then.
Guess that's why it's so hard to rely on anecdotal evidence one way or the other.
You can still watch a film/movie/moving picture made 50 years ago but with games you can't play a game made as recently as 5 years ago!!
[...]
Until that happens any history on games where I can't actually play the game in question is bullshit. It is the equivalent of a Wikipedia entry describing a film which will never capture the emotion of the media in question. While I agree that it's a shame many of those old classics can't be played anymore, I disagree with the conclusion:
a) Even if you played them today, you likely wouldn't feel the same sense of wonder players did back then, because you've seen more complex games before. It'd still be great from a historian's perspective, but it will not elicit the same emotions. (E.g. while I'm a film buff and love "Citizen Kane", I know that many regular movie watchers have trouble realizing its greatness, because much of the techniques it pioneered are standard practice nowadays. You can't go back and watch it with the fresh eyes and minds of those who'd only seen the movies made before it.)
b) Writing about games you cannot play anymore isn't "bullshit" - if something doesn't exist anymore, does that mean we should destroy all knowledge related to it? On the contrary, I'd say these histories are extremely important to preserve as much of the legacy as possible. Sure, it can never replace the original games, but if you don't remind people these things have been out there, they'll forget them. And that'll make sure nobody will ever try to resurrect them.
E.g: Why does one drag around the map under the field of vision? This strangely reverses controls. It'd feel much more natural to drag the field across the map the way a brid or a plane would fly around.
The same thing goes for the buttons that indicate the direction you're looking towards: The map doesn't change its orientation (rightfully so), it keeps North on top at all times. So why do the buttons on the compass interface wander around? Unless you happen to be looking North, they're not corresponding to the map display next to them, and they're confusing, because in our culture, people have been raised to expect North on top. Also, having buttons trade places after you clicked on them is almost never a good idea. (Just remeber the mess you have with multi-row tabbed dialogs under Windows...)
Still, the technology itself is impressive, but they should have done some usability testing on the interface.
Thanks a lot! I never looked there for some reason...
I like the new discussion system, but it's a hassle that it still doesn't seem to allow top-level replies. (I.e. to reply directly to the article, I need to switch it off.)
Besides, as long as you don't name any specific articles and they deficiencies, it's hard to decide whether your argument has any merit or whether you're just a conspiracy theorist who's ticked off that his personal view of the world is not represented on Wikipedia.
(Please don't take that personally, I have no opinion on you one way or the other, but as long as you don't state what you're talking about, it's hard to judge it.)
I haven't played around with Leopard myself yet, but I imagine a semi-translucent menu bar and a reflecting dock could get confusing sometimes.
E.g., I've read in a review that the new indicator for running applications - a small glowing dot - is sometimes difficult to spot between reflections on the dock. If that's the case, it seems like an unfortunate case of valuing eye candy higher than usability. I haven't read anything similar about the menu bar, but translucency on major interface items can be a pain.
[...]
The milestone that will follow the total feature-freeze is slated for September, as the target of Apple's internal development team is a totally feature-full and stable Final Candidate version of Mac OS X Leopard.
[...]
In early to mid October, Leopard should reach the Golden Master status and Apple will be launching the DVD and packaging production.
[...]
Finally, the release is scheduled for late October Is that a realistic time frame? Seems to be an awfully short to me, then again I've never been involved in projects on that kind of scale.
You know what I see it useful in? A camera, so that it could automatically add the location to the EXIF data of each photo taken.
Yep, I'd love a GPS-enabled camera, as well. I think Kodak had one on the market a few years ago, but it was an expensive high-end model. Currently, I'm using a Symbian phone + BT GPS unit + phototagging software to achieve the same result, but in-camera GPS would be much appreciated. Still, I think it's a price issue there, too. Anything but Sirf III is pretty much too flaky to use (and even that needs up to a minute to get its bearings), and those chipsets are still expensive.While this might be a nice geek toy, it wouldn't be practical for everyday use. Picture the scenario: You're in some unknown city, now you have to pull out your MacBook (better hope the battery's charged). After that you can either whip out your phone as well to switch on Bluetooth and get your laptop online via GSM or UMTS, or you've got to find a WLAN hotspot which would only let you look up stuff around that very hotspot. Not a killer app. Not Apple-like at all.
I could see something like this being useful on a PDA or a cell phone (if you've got a data plan), so it might be a feature of the rumored "iPhone". However, looking at the prices for Bluetooth GPS units, I wonder whether the chipsets aren't too expensive to make them a default option.
> > How would you eat then?
> Concerts. It's how artists make their real money anyway....
An we all know how downright mainstream the Beatles became after they stopped doing concerts in the mid-60s - just think of the catchy pop-tunes of "Strawberry fields forever" or "Revolution 9" compared to their earlier art-rock extravaganza "She loves you"...
The Austrialian/European version of EyeTV for digital over-the-air TV (DVB-T standard) doesn't convert the video format at all - it "just" singles out one MPEG2 stream from all those transmitted and sends it over to be saved on the Mac's HD.
My guess is that the HDTV version works the same way. Re-encoding the material on the fly would probably be too processor intensive, so it's easier to have a simple editor built into the software. Besides: iMovie is pretty self-contained. It wants its own project files,etc. For simple editing, you'd want something like QuickTime Pro, which can edit a single file without all the hassles iMovie puts you through. And, basically, EyeTV's editor feels almost like QuickTime Pro (a bit better with the thumbnails and such) but it comes with the device and is integrated into the recording and scheduling software whereas QuickTime Pro costs extra money and is an external application.
If you really need to do some iMovie tricks with your recordings, I'm sure there's a way to turn them into a DV stream, but most poeple won't want to do that, so I think it's wise they don't force users to create an iMovie project just to edit out some simple commercials - EyeTV's own editor does that just fine.