MythTV Vs. TiVo, Round 2

Egadfly writes with a comparison of the open source MythTV and the highly commercial TiVo Series 3. "How different are the two systems' available remote control devices and their graphic interfaces when it comes to ease of use? Which product should you choose if your HD signal comes OTA or if you plan to use CableCARDs? And what software features (present and future) can you expect with each product? Will loopholes in FCC regulations and cable company encryption ultimately squeeze out MythTV and other open source players?"

Balkenization.

Is Tivoization [wikipedia.org] part of the consideration?

Completely Off Topic

But maybe there should be a rule about not allowing links to Articles full of Advertisement that span over 7 pages with about 100 words/page...

Re:Completely Off Topic

That's why I skip ahead to the printer friendly version. http://www.dvrplayground.com/article/14501/MythTV- and-TiVo-Series-3-Comparison/;jsessionid=04B2D16BA B650A56F53AAC0E4C43607C [dvrplayground.com]

Re:Completely Off Topic

I thought he was kidding about how short the pages were until I looked. The intro page is short, and the summary is even shorter, yet they get a page each with no pictures. In fact only pages 2,3 and 5 have a reasonable amount on them, with the other 4 pages being only around two short paragraphs long each.

Add to that the fact that the summary doesn't really rule one way or the other...

Also your link doesn't work.

Printer friendly version

Notice how they cloak the printer friendly version using some javascript wizardry. So you (next page) have to(next page) wade through (next page) pages of (next page) content free (next page) glorified ad billboards.

CableCARD is all that matters

Until I can get CableCARD support in a home-built Linux box (and I know I never will) Myth is completely irrelevant. A set-top DVR is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-functional system.

Re:CableCARD is all that matters

For you, perhaps. I haven't a clue what CableCARD even means, and somehow I've managed to keep my Myth box's 160GB hard disk full continuously for as long as it's been in service.

Re:CableCARD is all that matters

My Myth setup simply uses an IR blaster to interact with the set-top box. It does precisely everything the latest HD TiVo does.

Just a suggestion, maybe you should know what you're talking about before you dismiss Myth as "irrelevant."

You're lying.

I know you're wrong because I tried to do exactly this before I went and bought a Series 3 Tivo. The only way to have a DVR for encrypted HD is to get a Tivo or a POS cableco DVR. Your setup (unless you have some magical HD capture card that nobody makes) can only record encrypted HD content that has been downconverted to SD, and even if you did have HD capture, it would be re-encoded.

Oh, and put a watt-meter on your cable box+MythTV combo. I'll bet you spend more on additional electricity than you would on the monthly Tivo service fee.

Re:CableCARD is all that matters

Not to me.

I dont have cablecard and I enjoy all the shows in full HD.
I use the bittorrent card.

Full HD, no commercials, I get to watch them the next day anyways. Heck because the same guys release the TV shows I can easily write a script with wget and other apps to look for the torrents and download them automatically. It's just like a tivo except it extracts the commercials and compresses them to mpeg4 so it's even easy for me to take them on my laptop.

and yes, I dont give a rats about "legality" these same asshats that run these networks are forcing me to find the shows on bittorrent because they demand the cable companies scramble it.

Re:CableCARD is all that matters

I don't necessarily agree that downloading is ok, but just wanted to play the devil's advocate for a second.

Take these scenarios:

1. Let's say you have a VCR recording over the air broadcasts, and it's set to record Heroes on Monday. It does and you happily watch your show, commercials and all. Morally acceptable, right?

2. Ok, same thing, except you fast forward through the commericials. Is this still morally acceptable? Really you're not upholding your part of the bargain (watching commercials) for the free TV you're getting.

3. Ok, so now you discover on Tuesday that your VCR didn't change timezones properly (something about DST being moved forward or some other nonsense), and didn't record Heroes for you. You download it with commericials and watch it. Is that bad? Is there a fundamental difference between this and the first scenario?

4. Or, say you download it with no commercials, how is that different at all than the second scenario?

Where exactly does downloading previously broadcast material become immoral?

The thing that bugs me the most with Myth...

... actually has nothing to do with its core function (pvr). It's the fact that the video and game plugins operate with information stored in the database. In theory this is fine, it lets you add covers, information, etc. The problem is it means you have to refresh the information whenever you add things to your directories, and if you're downloading IPTV stuff fairly often that's a pain. I wish it would have the option of just browsing the directories.

I love MythTV because...

...I can run the frontend on my laptop and watch live and recorded TV anywhere in my house. I don't yet use Myth for anything but TV using an 8 year old Hauppauge card but for me, the flexibility of the software is what wins me over. My only gripe is the default keyboard bindings don't make the most sense at first.

International Use

As a happy customer of Tivo for several years now I am quite disappointed to find that it will not work for me if I move to Australia.

I have been doing a little research on MythTV (again) and still am off put by the complexity of it. The Tivo box really is my OS X to MythTVs Windows, in my opinion. But an even bigger issue to me is if I had to start paying a monthly fee to Tivo since they dropped their lifetime support fee option.

ps. The article was so lean on details I wonder if the writer even touched either a Tivo or MythTV box.

As a MythTV user...

of going on 2 years, I'd have to say it's not even close - Tivo wins for the masses. Sure, my MythTV box does what my friends' Tivos do and more. But even though they are tech guys, too, I don't see many of them going through the pain in the ass experience that is setting up and maintaining the MythTV box.

I built my MythTV box a couple of years ago so I could record two shows at the same time (dual tuner PVR500 card) and then watch a third on our main cable. I planned on reusing olds parts as I had a fairly decent PC sitting around unused; all I needed to invest in was the tuner card and a remote. I got the MCE remote and a PVR500 for the job. All was fine and dandy until I found out that some obscure library for MythTV didn't work on my Athlon VIA motherboard chipset. A new motherboard meant new memory, and a new CPU. I also got a "HTPC" case so the thing didn't look ugly in the living room. So right off the bat my quest to do a homemade Tivo on the cheap without monthly fees set me back about $600 after throwing in a large hard drive, too. This didn't really bother me, though, as I figured it was part of doing business.

I used Knoppmyth to set things up, and granted, it did go fairly smooth. The basic install goes along fine, it's the customization and other tweaks that take time and effort. I currently have it recording up to two shows at once, use it as a multimedia center so I can copy videos and MP3s to it and use it as a jukebox, and have used it to play emulated NES, SNES, and MAME games. But here are some things that I've noticed while using MythTV, in no particular order:

I started off with a Ti4600 video card. It's fan started to die, so I spent money on an FX5200 card which I've read is recommended for MythTV. This went fine, and configured fine. But for some reason if I need to reset my MythTV box, the video settings revert back to a "generic" video card, and I have to recopy over the FX5200 settings from the Knoppmyth wiki. I have no idea why this is.

Related to the above, when the generic video settings are on, recorded audio and video is out of sync. The video quality is noticeably bad, too. When it's configured correct, things are a lot better.

I've played NES and MAME games on it. I've tried SNES, but can't get my Gravis controllers to work for some reason. Supposedly there's Genesis emulators out there, but I can't figure out how to use those within MythTV. I had issues setting up two controllers for the NES games, and they worked for awhile, but then I had some friends over and we were going to play and the 2nd controller didn't work anymore. I don't know why. Also, with the games, integrating the remote is supposed to be possible, but I don't know how to do it for my remote. It would be nice to be able to map certain keys to the remote to do emulator actions or to hit escape. Otherwise, I have to have a keyboard and mouse available when I'm using the emulators (currently via VNC). I don't have a wireless mouse/keyboard for the HTPC yet.

After about a year, things started locking up, recordings were out of sync. Turns out MySQL defaults to logging every database action, and the database logs filled up my hard drive, killing MythTV. There was a fix in the forums, but it was a pain.

I can only record basic cable. It can do digital, but it would have to hook up to my digital box and use IR forwarding to control the box. That would sort of defeat the purpose of being able to record a show and watch something else at the same time. Not to mention the whole reason I got it was so I could record *two* shows at the same time. I'd either need another digital box dedicated to the MythTV box, or some sort of CableCARD thing.

Perhaps the coolest thing about MythTV is the commercial skip. After it records a show, it marks commercials, and pressing a certain button while watching them jumps to the next segment of the show. I've found this to be accurate about 50% of the time. Usually, it works for the first commercial break,

GB-PVR

Anyone ever check out GB-PVR?

I run it home on top of XP Pro SP2, I only have the software installed thats needed for the PVR function, no Office or anything like that. Makes the machine very stable! Multiple tuner support, web based programming.. its got all the bells and whistles of Myth. The nice part is, EVERYTHING that needs to be done on the PVR side of things can be done from the remote! There is a very active forum/developer community and sub, the owner/programmer is on there posting and helping people daily.

http://www.gbpvr.com/ [gbpvr.com]

http://www.gbpvr.com/pmwiki/ [gbpvr.com]

http://forums.gbpvr.com/ [gbpvr.com]

gb-pvr anyone?

Yeah, I know it's Windows-based, but gb-pvr is the best free pvr solution out there, IMHO. I tried myth-tv/knoppmyth first. For an intermediate Linux user like me, setup and configuration was a nightmare, even with recommended hardware (read: hauppauge/nvidia). gb is EASY to configure, and it only consumes slightly more resources than myth. It's way easier to use, supports all the hardware that myth does, and it has available many of the nice plugins that myth has. I've been using it for a month, and I'll never watch TV without gb again.

Knoppmyth Makes Things Easier

Okay, I know that I'm a lot more technical than the general masses out there, but it took me all of 10 - 15 minutes to get Knoppmyth set up and working. I had a spare computer lying around, so I bought a Hauppauge PVR 350. I did have to tweak the sound a bit to get it to work right away after booting, and I did have some bad memory that I replaced (lock ups were not fun).

I enjoy being able to log my server usage with MRTG though. I'd like to see if Tivo can set up SNMP traps.

I will say that at the moment, Tivo is going to be a lot easier for the "moms and grandmas" out there to set up. Heck, they'd probably still need someone to set that up. There are pre-installed MythTV solutions though. http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?products_id=44 [mythic.tv] Is one such product. It's definitely more than Tivo, but at the moment there's no need for a monthly fee.

So, Tivo is currently more user friendly to set up. That could change if more people start offering comparable MythTV setups at comparable prices though.

Neither. It's MediaPortal versus Vista MCE

Frankly, MediaPortal [team-mediaportal.com] and the new Vista MCE [microsoft.com] are heads and shoulders about the rest and have the added benefit of being able to use Windows drivers which means everything on the planet is and will be supported.

Why not just use the cable company's DVR?

At my parent's house they just use Time Warner's HD Cable Box. Has a good 160GB of storage, interface is fine, and the monthly price is comparable to TiVO. No need for cablecard/ir-blaster/etc and there are 2 tuners and on demand video (although they never use it)

Depends on your needs/wants

Both are great. I've used Mythtv now for about 3 years. However, whenever someone comes and asks me about using Mythtv, I always ask them "what do you want to do with it?" Basically, if you don't plan on keeping what you record permanently (where pre re-encoding commercial flagging comes in nice), and you don't plan on watching downloaded/otherwise created elsewhere video conenct, then I recommend just geting a tivo. Mythtv can be a lot of work to set up, and as others have mentioned, depending on your setup you'll be plagued with problems permanently.

Commercial flagging is nice, but reporogramming the tivo remote to do 30 second forwrad jumps is trivial and taking 8 seconds to get through 6 minutes of commercials plenty good enough. If you don't want all the quasi legal features of Mythtv, then there's no point in messing with it ... unless messing with it is the point.

VDR

I'm quite surprised that they used mythtv or is vdr too german? Here in Finland the popularity is reversed to say the least and getting softcam to work with some cheap smartcard readers wasn't that big of a hassle. Recording porn err documentaries has never been this easy.

Every time I think of taking the plunge and do it

Rigt before going to spec out a nice bunch of PC components on NewEgg and build a good box, I always pass by the Myth TV Users Mailing List [gossamer-threads.com] to make sure that I get the most relevant and updated hardware necessary, and instead end up reading a sampling of the horror stories they go through, taking a few minutes to savor the different tortures one can be subjected to (video out of sync with audio, artifacts on certain channels, MySQL database corruption, NuvExport screws up, X breaks dependencies, and all the rest) and decide to wait another few weeks, certainly the new upcoming release will be much more reliable and user-friendly? And by the way, what happened to all of the things that were done during last year's Google's 'Summer Of Code' for Myth TV ? All the great features and enhancements [mythtv.org] that were worked on?

So I keep waiting, hoping that the next time I check the mailing list, their version of Matt Groening's Life In Hell [wikipedia.org] have died down a bit....

Even though I am definitely doing a fair amount of Sys Admin duties on various distros, this is different, the killer part is what will happen when something screws up while I'm not around, and my wife gets mad because something didn't work, (provided I can even teach her to deal with all of these menus, options and the whole 'watching Live TV through Myth' syndrome) or my kid decides that he knows better and starts trying to hack the box himself in frustration....?

Surely the TiVo is an attractive box for the wife and kids, but with technology changing as rapidly as it has been, it is questionable whether to invest in such a product today, unless we were hard-core TV addicts, and could justify the cost as it would immediately be recouped.

Funnily enough, the most expedient thing I've ended up doing has been to identify the things I want to watch, and as a previous poster pointed out, just BitTorrent the shows in HD without commercials the next day, no matter where in the world I may be. (...and yes, it is sweet to download things at 10 Megs speed while in certain countries like Japan or Norway!!...LOL!)

Net result: I hardly EVER watch any TV whatsoever, and the few shows I care about can be watched on my laptop.

Well, I wish I had more time to tinker.... and still, major kudos to Jarod Wilson for having created this amazing open-source wonder. But as others have pointed out, for either of these two options, it's really going to all be about being able to have Myth TV interact with the CableCard slot, at least in major urban centers where cable companies rule the roost, and antenna reception is unwatchable!! The killer is that companies like Time Warner Cable are offering their own PVR deals, so they will make sure to lock anyone else out of the convenience until forced to do so by the FCC... Or that someone learns to hack the Firewire outputs of some of those new set-top decoders. Then you potentially still have HDCP to contend with. Oh, brother!! Brave new world !!

Z.

MythTV can handle HDTV/encrypted content in Europe

This comparison would be completely different in Europe! In europe nearly every digital TV channel broadcasted over Cable, OTA or Sattelite is encrypted with one of many encryption standards (Conax, Irdeto, SECA, etc.).

Instead of a "CableCARD", which is used for viewing encrypted content in the US, a "Conditional Access Module" (CAM) is used in Europe, Africa and most Asian countries for all digital broadcast methods (DVB-C, -S and -T). Most TV companies supply set-top boxes with a built-in decoder and a smart-card, but the smart-card can also be used in other receivers or in a PC when you have the right CAM.
There are a lot of TV cards that can use CAM's and are very well supported by MythTV, for instance: http://http//knc1.com/gb.htm/ [http].
Receiving HDTV or Encrypted content with MythTV is no problem in Europe at least.

The TiVo doesn't seem to exist in Europe, so I wouldn't be able to compare it to TiVo myself, since I never saw one. A very popular digital TV receiver / DVR in Europe is the Dreambox: http://www.dream-multimedia-tv.de/ [dream-multimedia-tv.de].
The Dreambox is an open platform, is linux-powered and doesn't have any "problems" with DRM or whatsoever. The only limitation the Dreambox and other set-top boxes have is a lack of raw computing power and that's why I prefer to have all my home entertainment on a HTPC.
And that's where the Windows (MCE) vs. Linux discussion comes back!

Tivo? Who Cares?

Tivo seems a bit dated and irrelevant here. How does Myth compare to the Motorola Dual Tuner HD Box that Comcast and Verizon Fios use? I would imagine more people in the USA who are recording HD content use this box from the cable company. Isn't Tivo HD mostly for satellite?

Anyway, I'd love to switch away from the quirky motorola box, it's got way to many bugs and is very first generation. Can MythTV do anything for me here?

MythTV wins.

For the non-premium-channel watching geek.

1) No subscription fee
2) Commercial Flagging
3) No ads, auto-recorded shows, or other similar nonsense.

On the down side, it WAS a pain in the ass to set up. And not cheap; I think I spent $800+ on my box (HTPC case, 1G memory, two HD tuner cards, etc).

As for CableCard, I'm considering dropping cable entirely. All the shows I watch are on over-the-air TV, and I've now got working antenna set up.

The review only compares a few obvious abilities

A central entertainment system that needs to earn valuable space in the living room should provide more entertainment than just providing television.

My mythtv box does a few things that I believe makes it more useful to me than a Tivo.

1. I play World of Warcraft on my MythTV. Its hooked up to a HDMI flat screen TV so the resolution is ok. The play speed is similar to my laptop. This is very handy for hosting a WoW party where real live friends come round to play and eat pizza.

2. DSmyth lets me watch my recorded shows from any Windows PC in the house whenever I wish. Of course, this is provided wirelessly and works over 802.11b with no lag/stuttering because the bandwidth is reduced by transcoding.

3. Saves DVDs and CDs to disk, which protects them from the kids losing or breaking the original media.

4. Transcode ability lets MythTV automatically duplicate files into a format suitable for other devices (Ipaq or phone)

I assume the Tivo may have a web browser, for news and weather, since everything seems to nowadays, and that you can just open a file share and pull your shows onto a laptop for keeping the kids entertained in the car.

To prove I'm not just a fanboy, There are some areas which would benefit from development and bugfixes - MythArchive seems unreliable with transcoded shows, Hardware support for some devices (such as USB tuner sticks) is still at the "coming soon" stage which means you have to be a little careful which devices you purchase and scheduling does not automagically allow for overruns and cancellations. Unfortunately, the biggest pain in the rear that I have to deal with is due to the unfortunate state of dependencies that bite me when I try and update my Fedora underlying operating system, but that is a self-inflicted problem and irrelevent to the Tivo/MythTV comparison.

Firewire

Just to point out, it's a FCC regulation that cable companies provide a working Firewire port on cable boxes, if you request it. You can stream video from the cable box to your computer this way. MythTV supports a few of these cable boxes.

The problem is getting your cable company to enable it. It not a common request, so no one at the cable company knows how to do it.

Main TiVo Bitches

My major bitches about TiVo:

1: Their lack of an officially supported 30-second instant skip any longer.
2: No price guarantee against future increases any time they feel like it.
3: Their kowtowing to the movie/television industry to automatically delete recorded programs, again any time they feel like it.
4: Their changing their Terms of Service, again any time they feel like it.

The Dream for MythTV

The dream for Myth TV would be to have it work on your game console. Game consoles come with processors, memory, hard drives, television interfaces, and controllers. To be able to feed in a television signal through USB, or view more freely through a number of legal streaming sites (major TV networks are offering more of their shows over the Internet), on cheap, dual-use (e.g. gaming) hardware that already plays DVD's for you and has a spot in the living room and on your televisions video inputs, seems much better than a PC-based solution.

I want to develop MythTV

I have seven TiVos, and I want to use MythTV. In fact, I want to help develop MythTV in my spare time. My main barrier is I need someone to point me toward a setup which will give me the best control over both recording and code revision, including personal vetting of every revision coming from the official distribution to ensure it won't disrupt my own customizations or whether it renders mine moot.

I plan to take the code to a level where it could be used to schedule your own TV station, 24/7 or less, loaded with options and as flexible as a circus yoga master. I'm sure most development has been for in-band control. I want to develop a comprehensive out-of-band control system for it, and then marry the two.

Just help me get set up and I'll run with it.

MythTV is the clear winner (For Me!)

I tried to setup myth about 4 years ago. I could never get it working. I was using an AMD 600Mhz machine and wintv card. I got WebVCR working under Red Hat and that satisfied me for a while. Switching to an Athlon 1600 and a MPEG2 capture card I was able to get myth working under FC2. It worked very well. I added another tuner card. All worked well. I decided to add a third card, so here is what I did. I bought a new logic board/processor. I used the same brand (VIA logic/Athlon 3200 processer), and imaged my old unit to my new unit. Everything worked. Not one problem. I added a third capture card. Everything worked. Not one problem. I installed MythFrontend on an old Apple G4 733. It was just fast enough to handle Myth, and now I had Myth in the bedroom and living room (on the G4). I installed it on my G5 in my office now I have myth in three rooms. The old Athlon 1600 in the basement runs myth on the spare TV (using the same image!). Laptops? both running MythFrontend wirelessly. TV movies games, whenever, wherever I want. If I want to add a show from work, I just type in my home URL, (thanks DYNDNS) and search, and record. Myth does everything I need and the monthly fee $0.00!

Of course I am in the camp that absolutely sees no benefit whatsoever in HD TV. I don't need a 20 inch tv that costs as much as a week vacation at Disney World. I don't use a cablecard, and I don't really see the need for BLU-RAY or HD-DVD. It is just TV. I like to watch what I want where I want and how I want. I put forth as much effort as I needed (and once I got the initial setup done, there was minimal effort) to get the system running. Almost all of the hardware was spare stuff I had sitting around collecting dust. And since I enjoy working on PCs and I find open source anything to be good for the soul, you could almost say it was a pleasure to go through the work involved in setting this thing up.

And don't forget that monthly fee; $0.00!

But How

  But How would a CableCARD work with a TV Tuner for the computer? Comparing the two is pointless. Media center cases (Thermaltake makes the best.) are cramped for space. And those riser cards only support 3 slots TOTAL. They only support the 3 PCI or 2 PCI + Graphics slot. Graphics slot for a graphics card to better drive the video and untax the cpu. 1 PCI card is most definitely a tv tuner. That just leaves one more pci slot. Are you willing to spend couple hundred for HD Audio motherboard or will you need a sound card? Will you want second tv tuner? CableCARD would take up a PCI slot.

And theres the problem of Linux based Mythtv. MPAA or Cable companies will never support CableCARD on Linux. The very nature of Linux won't allow it. Linux is not profitable to companies to develop software for it. Cable Companies can't give OSS developers the ability to decrypt cable programming at will. It would allow people to steal cable. CableCARD is quite literally a Windows and OSX only thing.

There is only one foreseeable way to bring HD cable to Mythtv. CableCARD based cable box.

My question remains. HOW would a CableCARD fit into a Media center case with mythtv driving it?

Practical experience with MythTV

In late December, I set up a unused PC (600 MHZ) with 2 Haupauge PVR 150 TV cards and a 200 GB hard disk as a MythTV Frontend/Backend. The cards are Standard def. The setup was straightforwards and pretty easy. I did have some issues with jerkiness due to the video card in the machine, but got it to work well enough by changing some settings etc.

After And I set up the server, I then got an even older 450 MHZ PC with barely enough RAM, and made a front end out of it. Again, that didn't work well, but a cheap Nvidia card took care of that AND gave me Svideo out so I could run a monitor and a TV as a second monitor (dual screen) at the same time. I then forced MythTV to run on the TV and got TV plus internet. It was only jerky if I did too much internet or whatever on the PC while watching TV. You do have to watch what window has focus, if you want to do some control to MythTV, but you get used to alt-tab etc.

Because that worked so very well, at only the cost of 2 cards, I replaced the front end machine with a new 3200+ AMD socket 754 MB and chip at a little over $100. I had the case and everything else already. I also just took the 450 MHZ frontend and put it in another room, still on the MythTV network.

The new AMD system is a dream. I run TV, internet, Openofffice.org, VNC to other machines, XP in a VMWare session, and much more. And performance is never a problem.

MythTV is OTA, and there are plenty of stations, ABC NBC CBS PBS etc all have mutiple channels each. Fox goes HD next year, but I can record all of these SDTV using power search (record a show anytime it finds it by name, don't record dups and reruns, and skip commericals.

nice.

Still running on the 600 MHZ backend, but I am planning to upscale to a higher end AMD and plenty of RAM and 1.5 TB of Hard disk. This will be my main server for whatever purpose, including VMWare etc. Oh, and 4 or 5 HDTV cards, plus the SDTV cards while there is still SDTV.

Really, this is the coolest thing for OTA TV.

Distribution used: MythDora http://g-ding.tv/ [g-ding.tv], which is Fedora Core 5 and MythTV plus add-ons and on one install DVD. Also nice. FC6 would have been better, but this will do fine.

What about EyeTV?

I use a $200 Miglia addon to my mac mini, and can use both the eyeTV settup and my macmini's apple remote to enjoy watching my shows. Simple. Easy. And I don't pay every month... Its the best of both worlds...

MYTH is for recorders...TIVO is for ???.

I have had good success with MythTV however, it is not geared for channel surfers with set-top boxes.

The extra channel change loop to the set-top box makes channel changes agonizingly slow. The only real setup for hard core surfers are set-top boxes with built in PVR's.

As far as HDTV is concerned...until Hauppauge makes a PVR board with component video capture MythTV users will be stuck with s-video level quality.

I do admit that HD is great however, s-video capture has been serving me just fine.

Hedgehog

Do we need a new remote?

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/in dex.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070306006245& newsLang=en [businesswire.com]

Still useless for me :(

MythTV is still useless to me... I look at it every year or two, but there is still no clear way for me to plug my Sky satellite system into a Myth box and manage that with programming, etc... Sad, because I'd buy a box and get going in a heartbeat if I could use my Satellite.

It's all about expectations

I've used "standalone" DVR's for a long time, and have always been a huge advocate. I never really persued the "home-brew" route mainly because of the cost and time investments. I preferred the non-cable company ReplayTV models for control, but was always plagued by limitations imposed by the cable/satellite providers. Things as simple as controlling STB's and as esoteric as HD recordings were always hurdles, but what I was able to get to work worked well. As for cable company-specific DVR's, I used a MOXI dual tuner HD DVR, and it was excellent, but again, its specific feature set was controlled by the cable company, so I was at their mercy.

Recently, I chose to abandon abandoned the standalone versions to build an HTPC running SageTV. The end result, like MythTV, is an amazingly tailorable, controllable PVR system that gives me exactly what I want in a PVR. I can record and playback SD and HD content, edit videos, burn them to DVD, remotely access my content and schedule recordings remotely, and a host osf other excellent features. (I can record unencrypted HD broadcasts over cable using the HDHomeRun and its SageTV integration.) But all this "greatness" comes with some limitations: I cannot record encrypted HD channels that I pay for. I must have an STB to receive and record any premium content including premium movie channels, PPV, and On Demand. The very nature of non-integrated recording means that recording quality will degrade slightly from the original.

The good news in all this is that the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is very high, so the limitations are certainly non-issues.

But this all boils down to the simple fact that if you expect full cable/satellite company compatibility, you will be disappointed with any non-integrated solution. Until a viable CableCARD solution surfaces that lets PC's record and playback SD & HD recordings, your expectations will NEVER be met with a legal home-brewed system. Your best solution is to look to your cable/satellite provider for their DVR offerings.

That said, if you are willing to put up with the limitations imposed by the cable/satellite providers, then you can enjoy amazing flexibility and features. that will really transform how you watch and manage your TV, DVD, Music, and general information content.

Married Geeks Choose Tivo

Most married guys I know choose Tivo (yours truly included).
All the additional features in the world cannot make up for the pain you will feel in your life from a missed Greys Anatomy recording, or any sort of DVR downtime while you upgrade to Teh Latest Release of Myth...

-MJ

MythTV wins by default!

Flash news!
Tivo is unavailable to more than 75% of the world population.
(hint there is a world outside the US)

So for most of the world MythTV wins by default.
This little fact is too often forgotten.

Re:TiVo wins of course...

Hold on, guys, we can watch this show right after I reboot. Aw, crap, the nfs mount from the file server hung. Be right back, this will only take a minute. Wait, no, it's working now. Okay, there. I dunno why it's skipping, that should fix itself in a minute. Yeah, I know, it's still going on. Maybe another reboot would fix it. Aw shucks, it oopsed. Maybe this weekend I'll stop overclocking this AMD K6 I found in a dumpster over the holidays. I know, I know, but it didn't cost me a dime! Where are you guys going? Don't leave, this will only be a few more seconds. Trust me, this show is so awesome it's totally worth it. I'll just copy it over to the entertainment center box instead of the file server. Hm. I thought my network was faster than that, this should totally be taking less time. Fuck. Out of disk. Just lemme delete a couple things... there, now I'll redo the transfer. Oh, hey, you're back. What's in the bag from Fry's? No, what the hell, dude! I don't want a TiVo in my place, that thing is a tool of corporate oppression! Trust me, the myth box works 100% of the time, this is the only hiccup it's ever have, and it'll be fixed in a second. I don't care if that thing can download from Amazon! I can torrent any show ever. Okay, well, not that one. Or that one. But everything else is on torrent. Or usenet. There, see, it's booted now! Okay, it's playing. Hey, where'd everybody go?

Re:TiVo wins of course...

The moral of the story is that your friends only wanted you for your PVR capabilities?

Myth Wins of course

Sitting at my desk I realise that I have a whole weekend fiddling with my Mythbox:

Installing larger HDDs and playing with Volume manager so I can 'easily expand my storage space'
Installing a second tuner card so we can record two shows at a time
Making WOL work properly so I can start the backend from sleep with my laptop
Get The MythWeb plugin running so I can schedule shows from work
Install the SNES emulator so I can play supermario
Fix a quiter CPU fan to improve the noise footprint

If I owned a TiVO it would have installed with no trouble!
With myth I have weeks of fun ahead

Re:Myth Wins of course

I gave up on trying to figure out mythtv...

on my desktop I have a watch-tv.sh file:
START
    #!/bin/sh
    cat /dev/cxm0 > vlc stream:///dev/stdin
    bash &
STOP

I use the pvr250-control console app that was with the driver application to change the channel/input source.

To record? I cron a record.sh I made: record.sh channel file duration-in-minutes
START
    #!/bin/sh
    pvr250-control -t -m 0 $1
    cat /dev/cxm0 > $2 &
    sleep 1
    PID=$(ps | grep cat | grep cxm0 | cut -f 2 -d ' ')
    sleep $(echo "$3 * 60" | bc)
    kill $PID
STOP

Fancy? No
Elegant? Hell No
Works? Yes
Low Hassle? Yes

but yeah, a TiVo would probably be even easier than that.

Re:Myth Wins of course

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you aren't married...

Re:Myth Wins of course

sleep $(echo "$3 * 60" | bc)

sleep $(($3*60))? I am not nitpicking, it's just that you might want to know. (Or does your version do something extra?)

sleep ${3}m

Re:TiVo wins of course...

Nice try! The live TV side of Myth might be flaky - probably due to hardware constraints as much as the program - but for playing downloaded video It Works, I've never had a problem like that which you mention. And I use an nfs diskless solution too, never has it not booted. And thanks to power cuts it has gracelessly shut down several times, but so far so good.

Broadcast TV is dead, by the way.

Re:TiVo wins of course...

You know that part about not being as hard as you make it out to be? You should have paid attention to that. Get knoppmyth [mysettopbox.tv] burn to CD, boot from it and you are off and running. That pretty much works out of the box for ~80% of the people who try it.

Re:TiVo wins of course...

Invariably when KnoppMyth is mentioned, several sombodies will complain it is out of date. Valid enough but pointing my newly installed machine at Debian Testing and apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade took care of that.

Re:TiVo wins of course...

5 hours of your time just to make sure the components you buy are all compatible. At $200 the hour this is $1000 of my time

This is a device for watching television. You are building/buying this device so that you can sit in front of the idiot box like a slack-jawed yokel for thousands of hours. You're complaining that the 5 hours learning how to set-up MythTV is the waste?

What rate do you want to bill the universe for your TV-watching hours? Go for $450/hr; it sounds even more impressive. Your TV watching hobby might be costing you $200,000 per year, OMFG!

Re:TiVo wins of course...

I get this same argument discussing linux vs windows.

Granting someone else control over your box may* make it easier for you to use, but it sure as hell isn't your box anymore.
Back on the topic of media specifically, I'm afraid that most people have no idea how much the BigCo's are pushing for control [boingboing.net]. If people knew, would they care? I doubt most people will even see a problem with broadcast flags and devices that refuse to play content...
People are complacent, and have learned to accept a (imho) fairly high level of suck in exchange for not having to think.

(*But no guarantee ... while I have no 1st hand experience with it, Vista reads like a nightmare compared to any reasonable modern distro)

Re:TiVo wins of course...

To be fair, I've never used a Tivo. I have used a number of other DVRs provided by cable companies, and I'll take MythTV any day. The others I've used won't allow you to short your shows by TV show. When you have over 350 shows recorded, this is a must. I also have a 400 GB RAID for storage. Other DVRs will allow an eSATA drive, so they can get up to 500 GB, but lets hope you don't have a drive failure. MythTV also has a nice web interface, so I can set shows to record whether I'm in my room or across the country. My MythTV box has been up for a solid month without any problems, and I only rebooted then to try out a new Live CD and see if it would auto-detect my RAID. While I have had some more serious issues with MythTV, it's been 6 months, and I've upgraded both MythTV and my distro since then and it's been completely reliable. Tivo may be a cut above the other DVRs offered by my cable company, but MythTV puts the DVRs I've used to shame.

Re:TiVo wins of course...

To be fair, I've never used a Tivo

Lemme help, then.

won't allow you to short your shows by TV show

Tivo does. Sort by show or date/time recorded. Also groups related shows together into a folder (e.g., "Doctor Who - 5 episodes"). Series 3 also puts all HD shows in another folder.

I also have a 400 GB RAID for storage

Tivo doesn't offer RAID. It's pretty easy to stick a second (or replace your original with a larger) drive. Series 2 (non-HD) does allow transfers back and forth from your computer, so you can store 'em on your own RAID, tape backup, DVD-ROM, or what have you. Series 3 doesn't have this; it appears to be a legal issue getting worked out with Cable Labs. You'll probably see the same thing on any new device with a CableCard in it.

MythTV also has a nice web interface

Tivo's got one, too.

My MythTV box has been up for a solid month without any problems

My Tivo's uptime is measured in months/years. It reboots itself when new updates are available. It does this at 2:00 AM and hasn't missed a show yet. In the 7 years that I've had a Tivo (Series 1/2/3), I've forced a reboot *once*.

Tivo is an incredibly easy to use, rock solid (hey, it's running Linux) unit. Look, if you're happy tinkering with the thing, more power to ya. As for me, I turn the TV on when I'm done working, the kids are in bed, and I'm looking to unwind. I've got enough between work and my own side projects--I don't need to be messing with the TV, too.

One other point (and you may have had a solid Myth system for long enough to see this): When you get a device like a Tivo that is stable, simple to use, and works every time, things change. It becomes a new tool that transforms how you do things. I can't imagine watching TV without Tivo--it's that different (and that much better) than plain-old service. I skip commercials (but fast-forward through them so I can catch new show announcements or the occasional ad that is amusing the first time you see it). I watch shows on "Tivo time," skipping through the boring parts. I fast forward to the end of the remodeling show so I can see the results without all the witty banter. I check out old shows I haven't seen in years because Tivo had space and nothing better to do than record it. I don't worry about when seasonal shows are on (like the Peanuts ones)--Tivo catches them for me.

If you like watching TV, and you don't have this kind of experience, you should get a Tivo.

Re:TiVo wins of course...

Move along, nothing to see here...

From the article, about the User Interface:

This is a hard category to judge, but I'll give the interface and ease of use award to TiVo's Series 3. Really, the category is almost too tight to call. While MythTV has some better UI choices and abilities, TiVo's standard interface is more simple to setup (turn on the box) and more people are use to it.

I want screenshots! Not some excuse why it's hard to judge. "This is my seven page article. however, it's a hard subject. therefore I'm going to write how hard it is to write about this subject"

What a troll

HDCP is devil's spawn, but it doesn't prevent you from using HD for personal stuff.

HDMI has the advantage of a single audio/video cable solutiion from component to TV. If you want to stream your home movies over HDMI, you can happily do so.

The fact that the industry has eliminated fair use by stripping your latitide to do what you want with their content (not yours, btw - you don't own what comes to you via sat or cable, nor do you have many rights when it comes to OTA).

You must be one rich AC, 'cause there's not a lawyer in America who will take this one on for you without throwing a phone number at them. With the area code.